^M OF emci^
BR 325 .M63 1846 i
Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874
The life of Luther gathere(
from his own writings
THE
LIFE OF LUTHEE
GATHERED
FROiM HIS OWN WRITINGS.
M. MICHELET,
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE,
AUTHOR OF " PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES,'
" HISTORY OF FRANCE," &C. &C.
TRANSLATED BY
G. H. SMITH, F.G.S.
LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE.
CONTENTS.
Introduction , j
BOOK THE FIRST.
A.D. 1483—1521.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A.D. H83— 1.517.— Birth, Education of Luther— His
Ordination, Temptations, and Journey to Rome ... 3
CHAPTER 11.
A.D. 1517 — 1521. — Luther attacks the Indulgences. —
He burns the Papal Bull.— Erasmus, Hutten, Franz
von Sickingen, — Luther appears at the Diet of
Worms.— He is carried off o
BOOK THE SECOND.
A.D. 1521—1528.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER III.
A.D. 1523— 1525.— Carlstadt.-Munzer.— War of the
Peasants 30
CHAPTER I.
A.D. 1521 — 1524. — Luther's Residence in the castle of
Wartburg. — He returns to Wittembfrg without the
Elector's authority.— His Writings against the King i CHAPTER IV.
of England, and against Princes in general 18 j A.D. 1524— 1527.— Luther attacked by the Rationalists.
' — Zwingle. — Bucer, &c. — Erasmus 41
CHAPTER II. ! CHAPTER V.
I A.D. 1526 — 152!).— Luther's Marriage.— His Poverty,
Beginnings of the Lutheran Church. — Attempts at Or- j Discouragement, Despair, Sickness. — Belief in the
ganisation, &c 26 I approaching end of the World 4J
BOOK THE THIRD.
A.D. 1529—1546.
CHAPTER II. •
A.D. 1534— 1536.— The Anabaptists of Munster 52
A.D. 1529— 1532.— The Turks.— Danger of Germany.— CHAPTER III.
Augsburg, Smalkalde.— Danger of Protestantism ... 47 A.D. 1536— 1545.— Latter Years of Luther's Life.—
Polygamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, &c 56
BOOK THE FOURTH.
A.D. 1530—1546.
CHAPTER III.
Of Schools, Universities, and the Liberal Arts 64
CHAPTER IV.
The Drama.— Music — Astrology.— Printing. — Banking., 65
CHAPTER V.
Of Preaching. — Luther's Style.— He acknowledges the
violence of his character 67
CHAPTER I.
Luther's Conversations on Domestic Life, on Wives and
Children, and on feature 59
CHAPTER II.
The Bible.— The Fatliers— The Schoolmen.— The Pope.
— Councils 61
\/
BOOK THE FIFTH.
CHAPTER I. j
Deaths of Luther's Father, of his Daughter, &c 68 \
CHAPTER II. I
Of Equity ; of Law. — Opposition of the Theologians to I
CHAPTER V.
Temptations. — Regrets and Doubts of his Friends and
his Wife. — Luther's own Doubts 73
the Jurists
Faith : the Law
69 I CHAPTER VI.
I The Devil.— Temptations 74
CHAPTER III.
'0 CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER IV. j jjjg Ailments.— Longings for Death and Judgment.—
Of Innovations: the Mystics, &c 71 : Death, a. d. 1546 79
Additions and Illustrations
84
INTRODUCTION.
The following work is neither the life of Luther turned into an historical romance, nor a history of the
establishment of Lutheranism, but a biography, consisting of a series of transcripts from Luther's own
revelations. With the exception of the events of the earlier years of his life, when Luther could not
have been the penman, the transcriber has seldom had occasion to hold the pen himself. His task has
been limited to selecting, arranging, and fixing the chronology of detached passages. Throughout the
work Luther is his own spokesman — Luther's life is told by Luther himself. Who could be so daring as
to interpolate his own expressions into the language of such a man ! Our business is to listen to, not
interrupt him : a rule we have observed as strictly as was possible.
This work, which was not published till 1835, was almost entirely written during the years 1828 and
1829. The translator of the Scienza Nuora* felt at that period a lively consciousness of the necessity of
tracing from theories to their application, of studying the general in the individual, history in biography,
humanity in one man; and this a man who had been in the highest rank of mankind, an individual who
had been both an entity and an idea; a perfect man, too — a man both of thought and action; a man, in
fine, whose whole life was known, and that in the greatest detail — a man, whose every act and word had
been remarked and registered.
If Luther has not written his own memoirs, he has, at the least, supplied admirable materials for the
task+. His correspondence is scarcely less voluminous than Voltaire's; and there is not one of his dog-
matic or polemical works into which he has not introduced some unintentional detail which the biographer
may turn to advantage. All his words, too, were greedily garnered by his disciples; good, bad, insignifi-
cant, nothing escaped them. Whatever di-opped from Luther in his most familiar converse, at his fire-
side, in his garden, at table, after supper, his most trifling remark to his wife or his children, his most
trivial reflection, went straightway into their note-books. A man so closely watched and followed must
have been constantly letting fall words which he would have wished to recall. Lutherans have subse-
quently had occasion to regret their indiscreet records, and would willingly have erased this line, that
page; but ([uod scriptum est, scrijitum est (What is written is written).
In these records, then, we have Luther's veritable confessions — careless, unconnected, involuntary, and,
therefore, the more veritable confessions. Assuredly, Rousseau's are less ingenuous; St. Augustin's less
full, less diversified.
Had Luther himself written every word of this biography, it woulitake its rank between the two
works just alluded to. It presents at once the two sides, which they give separately. In St. Augustin's,
passion, nature, and human individuality, are only shown, in order to be immolated at the shrine of divine
grace. The saint's confessions are the history of a crisis undergone by the soul, of a regeneration, of a
vita nuova (a new life) ; he would have blushed at making us more intimately acquamted with that
worldly life on which he had turned his back. The reverse is the case with Rousseau. Grace is out of
the question ; nature reigns with undivided, all-triumphant, and undisguised sway; so much so, as at
times to excite disgust. Luther presents, not grace and natui'e in equilibrium, but in their most
agonising strife. Many other men have suffered the struggles of sensibility, the excruciating temptations
of doubt. Pascal clearly endured them all, but stifled them, and died of the effort. Luther conceals
nothing: he could not contain himself. He suffers us to see and to sound the deep plague-sore uiherent
in our nature, and is, perhaps, the only man in whose moral structure we can find a pleasure in studying
this fearful anatomy.
Hitherto, all that has been shown of Luther is his battle with Rome. We give his whole life, his
struggles, doubts, temptations, consolations; a picture in which the man engrosses us as much as, and
more than, the partisan. We show this violent and terrible reformer of the North not only in his eagle's
nest at Wartbourg, or braving the emperor and the empire in the diet at Worms, but in his house at
Wittemberg, in the midst of his grave friends, of his children, who cluster round his table, walking with
them in his garden, by the border of the small pond, in that melancholy cloister which became a family
* M. Michelet alludes to his version of Vico's great work.
t For Luther's German works I have followed the Wittemberg edition, in 12 vols. fol. 1539—1559; for his Latin, the
Wittembergedition.in? vols.fol. 1545— 155S, and, occasionally, that of Jena, in 4 vols. fol. 1600— 1B12 ; for the " Tischreden,"
the Frankfort edition, in fol. 1568. As for the extracts from Luther's letters, their dates are so carefully given in the text,
that the reader has only to turn to De Wette's excellent edition (5 vols. 8vo., Berlin, 1825), to lay hands upon them at once.
I have availed myself of some other works besides Luther's, — of Eckert's, Seckendorff's, Mareineke's, &c.
INTRODUCTION.
residence; here we hear him dreaming aloud, and finding in all surrounding objects, the flowers, the
fniit, the bird that flits by, food for grave and pious thoughts.
But the sympathy which may be inspired by Luther's amiable and powerful personal character must
not influence our judgment with regard to the doctrine he taught or the consequences which naturally
flow from it. This man, who made so energetic a use of liberty, revived the Augustinian theory of the
annihilation of liberty, and has immolated free-will to grace, man to God, morality to a sort of providen-
tial fatality.
The friends of liberty in our days are fond of citing the fatalist, Luther. At first, this strikes one as
strange. But Luther fancied that he saw himself in John Huss and in the Vaudois, champions of free-
will. The fact is, that these speculative doctrines, however opposed they may seem, take their rise in one
and the same principle of action — the sovereignty of individual reason; in other words, in resistance to the
traditional principle, to authority.
Therefore, it is not incorrect to say that Luther has been the restorer of liberty in modern times.
If he denied it in theory, he established it in practice. If he did not create, he at least courageously
affixed his signature to that great revolution, which rendered the right of examination lawful in Europe.
Aud if we exercise in all its plenitude at this day this first and highest privilege of human intelligence,
it is to him we are mostly indebted for it; nor can we think, speak, or write, without being made conscious
at every step of the immense benefit of this intellectual enfranchisement. To whom do I owe the
power of publishing what I am even now inditing, except to the liberator of modern thought ?
This debt paid to Luther, we do not fear to confess that our strongest sympathies do not lie this way.
The reader must not expect to find here the examination of the causes which rendered the victory of
Protestantism inevitable. We shall not display, after the example of so many others, the wounds of a
Church in which we were born, and which is dear tons. Poor, aged mother of the modern world, denied
and beaten by her son, it is not I, of a surety, who would wish to wound her afresh. Eleswhere, we
shall take occasion to express how much more judicious, fruitful, and complete, if it be not more logical,
the catholic doctrine appears to us than that of any of the sects which have risen up against her. It is
her weakness, but her greatness likewise, to have excluded nothing of man's invention, and to have sought
to satisfy at one and the same time the contradictory principles of the human mind. It was this, and
this only, which aff'orded those who reduced man to such or such a given principle the means of their
easy triumph over her. The imiversal, in whatever sense it be understood, is weak against the special.
Heresy means choice, a speciality, — speciality of opinion, speciality of country. Wickliff and John Huss
were ardent patriots; the Saxon Luther was the Arminius of modern Germany. The Church, universal
in time, space, and doctrine, was inferior to each of her opponents, inasmuch as she possessed but one
common means. She had to straggle for the unity of the world with the opposing forces of the world;
inasmuch as the larger number were with her, she was encumbered with the lukewarm and timid ; in her
political capacity she had to encounter all worldly temptations; the centre of religious behef, she was
inundated with numberless local beliefs, agamst which she could hardly maintain her unity and perpetuity.
She appeared to the world, even what the world and time had made her, and tricked out in the motley
robe of history. Having undergone and embraced the whole cycle of humanity, she had contracted its
littleness and contradictions. The small heretical communions, rendered zealous by danger and by
freedom, isolated, and therefore the purer and more sheltered fi'om temptations, misapprehended the
cosmopolitan Church, and compared themselves to her with pride. The pious and profound mystic of the
Rhine and of the Low Countries, the rustic and simple Vaudois, pure as the herb of his own Alps, could
easily accuse of adultery and prostitution her who had received and adopted every thing. Each rivulet
may say to the ocean : — " I deapend from my mountains, I know no other water than my own ; thou art
the receiver of the impurities of the whole world." — " Yes; but I am the Ocean."
All this might be said, and ought to be developed; and no work would stand in greater need of an
introduction than one dedicated to such a discussion. To know how Luther was compelled to do and to
suff'er that which he himself calls the extremest of miseries; to comprehend this great and unhappy man,
who sent the human mind on its wanderings at the very moment that he conceived he had consigned it
to slumber on the pillow of grace; to appreciate the powerlessness of his attempt to ally God and man,
it would be necessary to be cognizant of the most important attempts of the kind, made both before and
after his day, by the mystics and rationalists; in other words, to sketch the whole history of the Christian
religion. At some future time, perhaps, I may be tempted to give such an introduction.
Why, then, put off" this too ? Why begin so many things, and always stop before you complete ? If
the answer be thought of consequence, I willingly give it.
Midway in Roman History, I encountered Cliristianity in its infancy. Midway in the History of
France, I encountered it aged and bowed down; here, 1 have met it again. Whithersoever I go, it is
before me; it bars my road and hinders me fi'om passing.
Touch Christianity ! it is only they who know it not, who would not hesitate .... For me, I call to
mind the nights when I nursed a sick mother. She suff'ered from remaining in the same position, and
would ask to be moved, to be helped to turn in her bed — the filial hands would not hesitate; how move
her aching limbs !
Many are the years that these ideas have beset me; and, in this season of storms, they ever
constitute the torment and the dreams of my solitude. Nor am I in any haste to conclude this internal
converse, which is sweet to myself at the least, and which should make me a better man, or to part as
yet from these my old and cherished meditations.
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
BOOK THE FIRST.
A.D. 1483—1521.
CHAPTER I.
A.D. 1483—1517.
BIRTH, EDUCATION OF LUTHER. — HIS ORDINATION, TEMP-
TATIONS, AND JOURNEY TO ROME.
" In the many conversations I have had with
Melanchthon, I have told him my whole life from
beginning to end. I am a peasant's son, and my
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were
all common peasants. My father went to Mans-
feld, and got employment in the mines there ; and
there I was born. That I should ever take my
bachelor of arts and doctor's degree, &c., seemed
not to be in the stars. How I must have sur-
prised folks by turning monk ; and then, again, by
changing the brown cap for another ! By so
doings I occasioned real grief and trouble to ray
^Iher. Afterwards I went to loggers with the
pope7married a runaway nun, and had a family.
Who foresaw this in the stars ? Who could have
told my career beforehand^?'' i
John Luther, the father of the celebrated Mar-
tin Luther, was of Moera or Moerke, a small village
of Saxony, near Eisenach. His mother was the
daughter of a lawyer of the last named town ; or,
according to a tradition, which strikes me as the
preferable one of the two, of Neustadt in Fran-
couia. A modern writer states, but without giving
any authority for the anecdote, that John Luther,
having had the misfortune to kill a peasant who
was herding his cattle in a meadow, was forced to
fly to Eisleben, and afterwards to the valley of
Mansfeld. His wife, who was in the family-way,
accompanied him ; and, on reaching Eislgben,
she was brought to bed of Martin Luther, yitie
father, a poor miner, had great difficulty in sup-
porting his familj^jand, as will presently be seen,
his children were sometimes obliged to have re-
course to charity. ;Yet, instead of making them
help him with their labour, he chose that they
should go to school. ; John Luther seems to have
been a simple ancl smgle-hearted man, and a sin-
cere believer. When his pastor was administering
consolation to him on his death-bed : " He must
be a cold-blooded man," was his remark, " who
does not believe what you are telling me." His
wife did not survive him a year (a.d. 1531). They
were at this time in the enjoyment of a small
property, for which they were no doubt indebted
to their son. John Luther left at his death a
house, two iron furnaces, and about a thousand
thalers in ready money. The arms of Luther's
father, for peasants assumed arms in imitation of
the armorial bearings of the nobles, were a
hammer, no more. Luther was not ashamed of
his parents. He has consecrated their names by
inserting them in the formulary of his marriage
service : " Wilt thou, Hans (John), take Grethe
(Margaret) to thy wedded infe,^'' &c.
'"'^ it is my pious duty," he says in a letter to
Melanchthon, informing him of his father's death,
" to mourn him of whom it was the will of the
Father of Mercy that I should be born, him by
whose labour and sweat God has supported and
made me what I am, worm though I beJ Assuredly
I rejoice that he lived unto this day, to see the
light of truth. Blessed be the counsels and de-
crees of God for ever ! Amen !"
!■" Martin Luther, or Luder, or Lother (for so he
sometimes signs himself), was born at Eisleben, on
thelOthof November, 1483, ateleven in the evening.
Sent at an early age to school at Eisenach (a.d.
1489), he sang in the streets for a livelihood, as was
a common practice of that time with poor German
students. We are made acquainted with this cir-
cumstance by himself : — " Let no one speak con-
temptuously before me of the poor ' companions,'
who go about singing and crying at every door.
Panem propter Deum! (bread for God's sake!)
You know that the Psalm says — ' Princes and
kings have sung.' I, myself, have been a poor
mendicant, and have received bread at the doors of
houses, particularly in Eisenach, my beloved city!"
He at length met with a more certain livelihood, as
well as an asylum, in the house of dame Ursula,
wife or widow of John Schweickard, who took pity
on the poor wandering child ; and he was enabled
by this chiwitable woman to study four years at
Eisenach. -In 1501, he entered the univereity of
Erfurth, where he was supported by his father. '
In one of his works, Luther mentions his benefactress
in terms of tenderest emotion, and for her sake
valued the sex all his life. After essaying theology,
he was persuaded by his friends, to devote himself
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
A.D. 1483—1517-
to the study of the law, which, in that day, was the
path to all lucrative offices in both church and
state; but he never seemed to liave been attached to
it. j He preferred general literature, and especially
music, which was his passion, and which he culti-
vated all his life, and taught his children. He
does not hesitate to own his opiniDU that, next to
theology, music is the first of the arts : — " Music is
the art of the prophets ; the only one which, like
theology, can calm the troubles of the soul, and put
the devil to flight." He touched the lute, played
on the flute. Perhaps he would have succeeded in
other arts. He was the friend of the great paintei',
Lucas Cranach. He was, it seems, skilful with his
hands, and acquired the art of turning. His
predilection for music and literature, and the con-
stant reading of the poets, with which he diversified
his study of logic and of law, were far from fore-
shadowing the serious part which he was destined
to play in the history of religion; and it is presum-
able, from various traditional anecdotes, that,
notwithstanding his application to his studies, he
led the life of the German students of the day, and
participated in their noisy habits, their gaiety in
the midst of indigence, their union of a warlike
exterior with sweetness of soul and a peaceful
spirit, and of all the parade of a disorderly life
with purity of morals. Certainly, if any one had
met Martin Luther, travelling on foot from Er-
furth to Mansfeld, in the third week of Lent, in the
year 1503, with his sword and hunting-knife at his
side, and constantly hurting himself with these
weapons of his, he would never have thought that
the awkward student would in a short time over-
throw the dominion of the catholic church through-
out half of Europe.
In 1505, the young man's life was accidentally
turned into quite a new channel. A friend of his
was struck dead by lightning at his side. He ut-
tered a cry ; and that cry was a vow to St. Anne
to turn monk. The danger over, he made no at-
tempt to elude a vow into which lie had been sur-
prised by terroi", he solicited no dispensation ; he
regarded the stroke which he conceived himself to
have narrowly escaped, as a menace and command
from Heaven, and only deferred the fulfilment of
the obligation he had undertaken for a fortnight.
On the 17th of July, 1505, after having spent the
evening i)leasantly in a musical party, with his
friends, he entered the same night the cloister of
the Augustins, at Erfurth, taking with him only his
Plautus and his Virgil. The next day, he wrote to
various parties bidding them farewell, informed his
father of the step he had taken, and remained se-
cluded a whole month. He was conscious how much
he still clung to the world ; and feared to face his
father's respected countenance, his commands, and
his prayers. In fact, it took two years to persuade
Johu Luther to allow him his way, and to consent
to be (tresent at his ordination. A day on which
the miner could quit his wurk was fixed for the
ceremony ; and he came to Erfurth, accompanied
by many of his friends, when he bestowed on the
son he was losing twenty florins, the amount of his
savings.
It must not be supposed that the new priest was
impelled by any particular fervour to contract so
serious an engagement. We have seen the bag-
gage of mundane literature which he brought
with him into the cloister. Let us hear his own
confession of the frame of mind with which he en-
tered : " When I said my first mass at Erfurth,
I was all but dead, for I was without faith. My
only thought was, that I was most acceptable. 1
had no idea that I was a sinner. The first mass
was an event much looked to, and a considerable
sum of money was always collected. The horce
canonicce were borne in with torches. The dear
young lord, as the peasants called their new priest,
had then to dance with his mother, if she were still
alive, whilst the bystanders wept for joy ; if dead,
he put her, as the phrase runs, under the commu-
nion-cup, and saved her from purgatory."
Luther having obtained his wish, having become
priest and monk, all being consummated and the
door closed, there then began, I do not say regrets,
but misgivings, doubts, the temptations of the flesh,
the pernicious subtleties of the spirit. We of the
present day can have but a faint idea of the rude
gymnastics of the solitary mind. Our passions are
regulated; we stifle them in tlieir birth. How can
we, plunged in the enervating dissipation of a thou-
sand businesses, studies, and easy enjoyments, and
blunted by precocious satiety both of the senses and
the mind, picture to ourselves the spiritual conflicts
entered into by the man of the middle age 2 the
painful mysteries of an abstinent and phantastic
life; the fearful fights which have taken place,
noiselessly and unrecorded, betwixt the wall and the
sombre casement of the monk's j)oor cell ? An
archbishop of Mentz was accustomed to say : " The
human heart is like the stones of a mill; if you put
corn between them they grind it and make it into
flour; but if you put none, they keep turning till
they grind themselves away." ..." When I was
a monk," says Luther, " I often wrote to Dr.
Staupitz. I once wrote to him, ' Oh ! my sins ! my
sins! my sins !' to which he replied, ' You desire to
be without sin, and yet are free from all real sin.
Christ was the pardon for sin.' "... "I fre-
quently confessed to Dr. Staupitz, not about trifles
such as women are in the habit of doing, but about
thoughts which go to the root of the matter. He
answered me, like all other confessors, ' I don't
understand you.' At last he came to me as I was
sitting at table, and said, ' Are you so sad, then,
f rater Marline ? ' ' Ah !' replied I, ' yes I am.'
' You are not aware,' he said, ' that temptation of
the kind is good and necessary for you, but only for
you.' He simply meant that I was learned, and,
without such temptations, would become proud and
haughty ; but I afterwards knew that it was the
Holy Ghost that was speaking to me."
Elsewhere, Luther describes how those tempta-
tions had reduced him to such a condition that he
did not eat, drink, or sleep for a foi'tnight. " Ah !
were St. Paul now living, how should I wish to hear
from himself what kind of temptation it was by
which he was tried. It was not the sting of the
flesh; it was not the good Tecla, as the Papists
dream. Oh ! no; that were not a sin to rack his
conscience. It was something exceeding the
despair caused by sins ; it was rather the tempta-
tion alluded to by tlie Psalmist, when he exclaims,
' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me V
As if he meant to say, ' Thou art my enemy without
a cause;' or the cry of Job : ' I am, nevertheless,
just and innocent.' I feel certain that the book of
Job is a true history, out of which a poem was sub-
sequently made. . . . Jerome and the other fathers
A.D. 1483—1517.
HIS SPIRITUAL TRIALS.
did not undergo sueli temptations. Tliey suffered
but puerile ones, tliose of the flesh, which, how-
ever, have their own pangs too. Augustin and
Ambrose had theirs; they trembled before the
sword; but this is nothing in comparison with the
angel ot Satan, who buffets with the Jists. . . . If my
life endure a little longer I will write a book on
temptations, without undergoing which one can
neither comprehend Holy Scripture nor know the
love and fear of God.'' — " .... I was ill in the in-
firmary. The cruellest temptations exhausted and
racked my fi'ame, so that I had scarcely power to
draw a breath. None gave me comfort. Those to
whom I complained answered, ' We know nothing
of this.' Then I said to myself: ' Am I alone to be
so depressed in mind ? ' . . . Oh ! what horrible
spectres and faces danced around me ! . . . But,
for these ten years, God, bj' his dear angels, has
given me the comfort of fighting and writing (in
his cause ?)."
Long after this, the year before his death, he
explains the nature of these fearful temptations : —
" From the time that I atten<led the schools, I had
felt, when studying St. Paul's Epistles, the most
intolerable anxiety to know the intent of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Romans. I stuck at one phrase —
Justitia Dei recelatur in lllo (for tb.ereiu is the
righteousness of God revealed). I hated that word,
Justitia Dei (the righteousness of God), because I
had learnt to understand it, with the schoolmen, of
that active justice, through wliich God is just, and
punishes the unjust and sinners. Leading the life
of a blameless monk, yet disturbed by the sinner's
uneasy conscience, and unable to feel certain of
justification before God, I could not love, rather,
1 must confess it, I hated this just God, the
avenger of sin. I waxed wroth, and murmured
loudly within myself, if I did not blaspheme —
' What,' I said, ' is it not enough that unhappy
sinners, already eternally lost through original
sin, are overwhelmed with innumerable woes by
the law of the decalogue, but must God heap
sufl'ering upon sufi"ering, and menace us in the
Gospel itself with his justice and his wrath ?' , . .
I was hurried out of myself on this wise by the
uneasiness of my conscience, and kept constantly
recurring to and sifting the same passage, with
a burning desire to penetrate St. Paul's meaning.
" As I meditated day and night upon the words:
' For therein is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith : as it is written, The just shall
live by faith,' God at length took pity upon me. I
perceived that the righteousness of God is that by
which the just man, through God's goodness, lives,
that is to say, faith ; and that the meaning of the
passage is — the Gospel reveals the righteousness of
God, a passive i-ighteousness, through which the
God of mercy justifies us by faith. On this I felt
as if I were born again, and seemed to be entering
through the opening portals of Paradise. . . . Some
time afterwards I read St. Augustin's work, Of the
Letter and the Sj/trit, and found, contrary to my
expectation, that he also understands by the right-
eousness of God, that which God imputes to us by
justifying us; a coincidence which afforded nie grati-
fication, although the subject is imperfectly stated
in the work, and this father does not explain
himself fully or clearly on the doctrine of im-
putation "
In order to confirm Luther in the doctrine
of grace, there wanted but his visiting the country
in which grace had beccmie extinct, that is, Italy.
We need not describe the Italy of the Borgias.
There indisputably existed at this period a cha-
racteristic (jf which history has seldom or never
presented another instance ; a reasoning and scien-
tific perversity, a magnificent ostentation of crime ;
to sum up the whole in one word, the priest-
atheist, king in his own belief of the woi-ld. This
belonged to the age ; but what belonged to the
country, and what cannot change, is the uncon-
querable paganism which has ever existed in
Italy ; where, despite every eff'ort, nature is
pagan, and art follows nature, a glorious comedy,
tricked out by Raphael, and sung by Ariosto. The
men of the North could but faintly appreciate all
that there is of grave, lofty, and divine in Italian
art, discerning in it only sensuality and carnal
temptations ; their best defence against which was
to close their eyes and pass on quickly, cursing as
they passed. Nor wei'e they less shocked by
Italy's austerer part, policy and jurisprudence.
The Germanic nations have ever instinctively
rejected and cursed the Roman law. Tacitus de-
scribes how on the defeat of Varus, the Germans
took their revenge on the juridical forms to which
he had endeavoured to subject them : having
nailed the head of a Roman lawyer to a tree, one
of these barbarians ran his tongue through with a
bodkin, exclaiming, " Hiss, viper 1 hiss, now !"
This hatred of the legists, perpetuated throughout
the Middle Age, was, as it will be seen, warmly
participated in by Luther ; as, indeed, might have
been expected. The legist and the theologian are
the two poles— the one believes in liberty, the
other in grace ; the one in man, the other in God.
Italy has always entertained the first of these
beliefs : and the Italian reformer, Savonarola,
who preceded Luther, only proposed a change in
works and manners, and not in faith.
Behold Luther in Italy. The hour that one first
descends from the Alps into this glorious land is
one of joy, of vast hopes ; and, indisputably, Luther
hoped to confii'm his faith in the holy city, and
lay his doubts on the tombs of the holy apostles.
Nor was he without a sense of the attraction of
ancient, of classic Rome ; that sanctuary of the
learning which he had so ardently cultivated in
his poor Wittemberg. His first experience of the
country is being lodged in a monastery, built of
marble, at Milan ; and so as he proceeds from
convent to convent, he finds it like changing from
palace to palace. In all, alike, the way of living
is lavish and sumptuous. 'J'lie candid German
w.as somewhat surprised at the magnificence in
which humility arrayed herself, at the regal
splendour that accompanied penitence ; and he
once ventured to tell the Italian monks that it
would be better not to eat meat of a Friday ; an
observation which nearly cost him his life, for
he narrowly escaped an ambush they laid for him.
He continues his journey, sad and undecided,
on foot, across the burning plains of Lombardy.
By the time he i-eaches Padua he is fairly ill ;
but he persists, and enters Bologna a dying man.
The poor traveller's head has been overcome by
the blaze of the Italian sun, by the strange sights
he has seen, the strangeness of manners and of
sentiments. He took to his bed at Bologna, the
stronghold of the Roman law and the legists, in
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1517.
the tirra expectation of speedy death ; strengthen-
ing himself by whispering in the words of the
prophet and the apostle, " The just man lives by
faith." In one of his conversations he displays
with much simplicity the horror felt of Italy by
the worthy Germans : " The ItaUans require no
more to take away your life than that you should
look into a glass; and can deprive you of all your
senses by secret poisons. The very air is deadly
in Italy. They close the windows with the greatest
care at night, and stop up all the crevices."
Luther asserts that both he and the brother who
accompanied him fell ill through having slept with
the windows open ; but two pomegranates that
they eat, with God's grace, saved their lives. He
resumed his journey, passed through Florence
only, and at last entered Rome. He alighted at
the convent of his order, near the Porta del
Popolo. " As soon as I arrived I fell on my knees,
raised my hands to heaven, and exclaimed, ' Hail,
holy Rome, sanctified by holy martyrs, and the
blood which they have shed here !'".... In his
enthusiasm, he says he hastened to every sacred
spot, saw all, believed all. But he soon dis-
covered that he was the only believer. Christianity
seemed to be forgotten in this capital of the
Christian world. The pope was no longer the
scandalous Alexander VI., bvit the choleric and
warlike Julius II. ; and this father of the faithful
breathed only blood and desolation. His great
artist, Michael Angelo, represented him hurling
his benediction at Bologna, like a Jupiter hurling
thunder ; and Julius had just given him an order
for a tomb to be as large as a temple. 'Twas the
monument, of which the Moses, amongst other
statues, has come down to us.
The sole thought of the pope, and of Rome, at
this period, was war with the French. Had Luther
undertaken to speak of grace and the powerlessness
of woi'ks to this strange priest, who besieged towns
in person, and who but a short time before would
not enter Mirandola except through the breach, he
would have met with a patient listener ! His car-
dinals, so many officers serving their apprentice-
ships to war, were politicians, diplomatists, or else
men of letters, learned men sprung from the ranks
of the people, who only read Cicero, and would
have feared to compromise their Latinity by opening
the Bible. When speaking of the pope, they styled
him kiyh poiitif; a canonized saint was, in their
language, relatus inter divos (translated to Olympus) ;
and if they did happen to let fall an allusion to
God's grace, it was in the phrase, Deorum imnior-
tal'ium beneficiis (by the kind aid of the immortal
Gods). Did our German take refuge in churches,
he had not even the consolation of hearing a good
mass. The Roman priest would hurry through the
divine sacrifice so quickly, that when Luther was
no further than the Gospels, the minister who per-
formed service was dismissing the congregation
with the words, " Ite, missa est," (Ye may go, ser-
vice is over.) These Italian priests would often
presume to show off the freethinker, and, when
consecrating the host, to exclaim " Pants cs, et panis
manebis." (Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt
remain.) To veil one's head and fly was the only
resource left. Luther quitted Rome at the end of
a fortnight, beai'ing with him, into Germany, the
condemnation of Italy, and of the Church. In his
rapid and saddening visit, the Saxon had seen
enough to enable him to condemn, too little to allow
him to comprehend. And, beyond a doubt, for a
mind preoccupied with the moral side of Christian-
ity, to have discovered any religion in that world of
art, law, and policy, which constituted Italy, would
have requii-ed a singular effort of philosophy. " I
would not," he somewhere says, " I would not have
missed seeing Rome for a hundred thousand florins"
(which words he repeats three times). I should
ever have been uneasy, lest I might have done in-
justice to the pope."
CHAPTER II.
A.D. 1517— 1521.
LUTHER ATTACKS THE INDULGENCES. — HE BUKNS THE |
PAPAL BULL — ERASMUS, HUTTEN, FRANZ VON SICKIN- |
GEN. — LUTHER APPEARS AT THE DIET OF WORMS. — HE
IS CARRIED OFF.
The papacy was far from suspecting her danger.
Ever since the thirteenth century, she had been
clamoured against and railed at ; until the world
appeared to her to have been lulled to sleep
by the monotonous wranglings of the schools.
There seemed nothing strikingly new left to be said :
every one had talked himself out of breath. Wick-
liff, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, persecuted, con-
demned, and burnt, had, nevertheless, had time to
make full clearance of their minds. The doctors
of the most Catholic University of Paris, the Pierre
d'Aillys, the Clemengises, even the mild Gerson
himself, had had, respectively, their blow at the
papacy. Patient and tenacious, she lasted, how-
ever, and made shift to live on ; and so the fifteenth
century slipped away. The councils of Constance
and Bale produced greater noise than result. The
popes let them go on talking, managed to get the
Pragmatic acts revoked, quietly re-established
their dominion in Europe, and founded a great so-
vereignty in Italy. Julius II. conquered for the
church ; Leo X. for his family. The latter, young,
worldly-minded, fond of literature, a man both of
pleasure and of business, like the rest of the Me-
dieis, had all the passions of his age, both those of
the old popes and those of his own day. He aimed
at making the Medici kings ; and he himself sus-
tained the part of the first king of Christendom.
Independently of that expensive scheme of diplo-
macy which embraced all the states of Europe, he
maintained distant scientific relations, pushed his
inquiries even into the north, and made a collection
of the monuments of Scandinavian history. At
Rome, he built St. Peter's, a duty bequeathed him
by Julius II. ; who had not sufficiently calcu-
lated his resources, for who could think of money
when Michael Angelo laid such a plan before him ?
Speaking of the Pantheon, he had said, " I will
hang it up three hundred feet high in the air."
The poor Roman state was not strong enough to
contend with the magnificent genius of such artists,
whose conceptions even the ancient Roman empire,
the master of the world, would hardly have been
able to realize. Leo X. had begun his pontificate
by selling Francis I. what did not belong to him,
the rights of the church of France ; and, shortly
afterwards, in order to raise money, he had created
thirty cardmals at once. These were trifling re-
sources. He was not owner of the mines of
A.D. 1517—1521.
HIS THESES AGAINST THE INDULGENCES.
Mexico ; his mines were the ancient faith of the
people, their credulous good-nature ; and he had
sold the right of working tlieiu in Germany to the
Dominicans, who succeeded the Austin friars in
the sale of indulgences. The Dominican, Tetzel, an
impudent mountebank, went about with great bus-
tie, display, and expense, disposing of his ware in
the churches, public squares, and taverns. He
pocketed the proceeds, giving in the smallest re-
turn he possibly could ; a fact which the pope's
legate brought home to him some time after. As
the faith of purchasers waxed less, it became expe-
dient to enhance the merit of the specific, which had
been so long hawked about that the market had
fallen. The fearless Tetzel had pushed rhetoric
to the extremest limits of amplification. Boldly
heaping pious lie on lie, he went into an enumera-
tion of all the evils cured by this panacea, and, not
contenting himself with known sins, invented
crimes, devised strange, unheard-of wickednesses, of
which no one had ever dreamed before ; and when
he saw his auditory struck with hori'or, coolly
added, " Well, the instant money rattles in the
pope's coffers, all will be expiated !"
Luther asserts that at this time he hardly knew
what indulgences were; but when he saw a pro-
spectus of them, proudly displaying the name and
guarantee of the archbishop of Mentz, whom the
pope had appointed to superintend the sale of
indulgences in Germany, he was seized with indig-
nation. A mere speculative problem would never
have brought him into contact with his ecclesiastical
superiors; but this was a question of good sense and
morality. As doctor of theology, arid an influential
professor of the university of Wittemberg which
the elector had just founded, as provincial vicar of
the Austin friars, and the vicar-general's substitute
in the pastoral charge and visitation of Misnia and
Thuringia, he, no doubt, thought himself more re-
sponsible than anyone else for the safeguard of the
Saxon faith. His conscience was aroused. He
run a great risk in speaking; but, if he held his
tongue, he believed his damnation certain. He
began in legal form, applying to his own diocesan,
the bishop of Brandenburg, to silence Tetzel. The
bishop replied, that this would be to attack the
power of the Church; that he would involve himself
in trouble of every kind, and that it would be wiser
for him to keep quiet. On this, Luther addressed
himself to the primate, archbishop of Mentz and of
Magdeburg (a prince of the house of Brandenburg,
a house hostile to the elector of Saxony), and sent
him a list of propositions which he offered to main-
tain against the doctrine of indulgences. We
abridge his letter, which runs to great length in
the original (October 31st, 1517).
" Venerable father in God, most illustrious prince,
vouchsafe to cast a favourable eye on me, who am
but dust and ashes, and to receive my request with
pastoral kindness. There is circulated throughout
the country, in the name of your grace and lord-
ship, the papal indulgence for the erection of the
cathedral of St. Peter's at Rome. I do not so
much object to the declamations of the preachers of
the indulgence, as to the erroneous idea entertained
of it by the pooi-, simple, and unlearned, who are
every where openly avowing their fond imaginations
on the subject. This pains me, and turns me sick.
.... They fancy that souls will be delivered from
pui'gatory as soon as their money clinks in the
(papal) coffer. They believe the indulgence to be
powerful enough to save the greatest sinner, even
cue (such is their blasphemy) who might have vio-
lated the holy mother of our Saviour ! . . . . Great
God ! these poor souls, then, are to be taught, under
your authority, to death and not to life. You will
incur a fearful and heavily increasing responsibility.
.... Be pleased, noble and venerable father, to
read and take into consideration the following
propositions, in which is shown the vanity of the
indulgences which the preachers give out as a
certainty."
The archbishop making no reply, Luther, who
misdoubted such would be the case, on the very
same day at noon (October .31st, 1517, the day be-
fore All Saints' Day) affixed his pi'opositions to the
door of the church of the castle of Wittemberg,
which is still in existence.
" The following theses will be maintained at
Wittemberg, before the reverend Martin Luther,
moderator, &c., 1517: —
" The pope neither can nor will remit any penalty
except such as he has himself imposed, or in con-
formity with the canons.
" The penitential canons are for the living; they
cannot impose any punishment on the soul of the
dead.
" The changing of canonical punishment into
the pains of purgatory is a sowing of tares: the
bishops were clearly asleep when they suffered such
seed to be sown.
" That power of extending relief to souls in pur-
gatory, which the pope can exercise throughout
Christendom, belongs to each bishop in his own
diocese, each curate in his own parish .... Who
knows whether all the souls in purgatory would
wish to he released ? is said to have been asked by
St. Severinus.
" Christians should be taught, that unless they
have a superfluity, they ought to keep their money
for their family, and lay out nothing upon their sins.
" Christians should be taught, that when the pope
grants indulgences, he does not so much seek for
their money as for their earnest prayers in his
behalf.
" Christians should be taught, that if the pope
were made acquainted with the extortions of tlie
indulgence-preachers, he would prefer seeing the
basilica of St. Peter's reduced to ashes, to building
it with the flesh, fleece, and bones of his sheep.
" The pope's wish must be, if indulgences, a
small matter, are proclaimed with the ringing of a
bell, with ceremonial, and solemnity, that the
Gospel, so great a matter, should be preached with
a hundred bells, a hundred ceremonies, a hundred
solemnities.
" The true treasure of the Church is the sacro-
sanct Gospel of the glory and gi'ace of God.
" One has cause to hate this ti-easure of the
Gospel, by which the first become the last.
" One has cause to love the treasure of indul-
gences, by which the last become the first.
" The treasures of the Gospel are the nets by
which rich men were once fished for.
" The treasures of indulgences are the nets with
which men's riches are now fished for.
" To say that the cross, placed in the pope's
arms, is equal to the cross of Christ, is blas-
phemy.
" Why does not the pope, out of his most holy
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1517— 152L
charity, empty purgatory, in which ai'e so many
souls in punishment ? This would be a worthier
exercise of his power than freeing souls for money
(this money brings misfortune), and to put to what
use ? to build a church.
" What means this strange compassion of God
and the pope's, who, for money's sake, change the
soul of an impious person, of one of God's enemies,
into a pious soul and one acceptable to the Lord I
" Cannot the pope, whose treasures at the present
moment exceed the most enormous treasures, build
a single church, the basilica of St. Peter's, with his
own money, rather than with that of the poor
faithful ?
" What does the pope remit, what does he give
those who, by perfect repentance, are entitled to
plenary forgiveness ?
" Far from us all those prophets, who say to the
people of Chi'ist — 'Peace, peace,' and do not give
peace.
" Far, very far, all those prophets who say to
Christ's people — ' Tlie cross, the cross,' and do not
show the cross.
" Christians should be exhorted to follow Christ,
their head, through pains, punishments, and hell
itself ; so that they may be certified that it is
through tribulations heaven is entered, and not
through security and peace, &c."
These propositions, which are all negative and
polemic, found their complement in the following
dogmatic theses, which wex'e published by Luther
almost simultaneously : —
" ]\Ian by his nature cannot will that God be
God. He would rather himself be God, and that
God was not God.
" It is false that appetite is free to choose both
ways ; it is not free, but captive.
" There exists in nature, before God, nothing
save concupiscence.
" It is false that this concupiscence can be regu-
lated by the virtue of hope. For hope is opposed
to charity, which seeks and desu'es only what is of
God. Hope does not come of our merits, but of
our passions, which efface our merits.
" The best and only infallible preparation and
disposition for the reception of grace, are the
choice and predestination of God from all eternity.
"As regards man, nothing precedes grace, except
indisposition to grace, or rather rebellion.
" It is false that invincible ignorance is any
extenuation. Ignorance of God, of oneself, of good
works, is the invincible nature of man, &c."
The publication of these theses, and the sermon
in the vulgar tongue, which Luther delivered in
support of them, fell like a thundei-bolt upon
Germany. Tliis immolation of liberty to grace,
of man to God, of the finite to the infinite, was
recognized by the German people as the true
national religion, the faith which Gottsclialk had
professed in the days of Charlemagne, in the very
cradle of German Christianity, the faith of Tauler,
and of all the mystics of the Low Countries. The
people thi'ew themselves wildly and greedily on the
religious food, from which they had been weaned
since the fourteenth century. The propositions
were printed by countless thousands, devoured,
circulated, hawked about. Luther was alarmed at
his own success. " I am grieved," he saj's, " to
see them printed and cii'culated in such numbers ;
'tis not a proper way of instructing the people. I
myself still retain some doubts. I could have
proved some points better, and should have omitted
others, had I foreseen this." He seemed, indeed,
disposed to retract everything, and to submit. " I
desire to obey," he said ; " I should prefer obeying
to working miracles, even had I the gift of miracles."
But these pacific resolutions were dissipated by
Tetzel's conduct, in burning the propositions. The
Wittemberg students retaliated on Tetzel's, and
Luther expresses some regret at it. However, he
published his Resolutiotis, in support of his first
propositions. " You shall see," he writes to a friend
my Resolutiones et Responsioncs (resolutions and an-
swers). Perhaps, you will think some passages
moi-e fi'ee than was required ; but so much the
more intolerable must they seem to the flatterers of
Rome. I had already published them : otherwise,
I would have softened them down a little."
The noise of this controversy spread beyond
Germany, and reached Rome. It is said that Leo X.
believed the whole to be a matter of professional
jealousy, betwixt the Austin friars and Dominicans;
and that he exclaimed, " Mere monkish rivalry !
brother Luther is a man of genuis !" Luther
avowed his respect for the pope, and at the same
time wi'ote two letters, one being addressed to
Leo X., in which he submitted himself unreservedly
to him and to his decision . " Most holy father,"
were his concluding words, " I cast myself at your
feet, with the offer of myself, and all that is in me.
Pronounce the sentence of life or death ; call,
recall, approve, disapprove, I acknowledge your
voice to be the voice of Christ, who reigns and
speaks in you. If I have deserved death, I shall
not flinch from dying, for the earth and the fulness
thereof are the Lord's, whose name be blessed for
ever and ever ! May he vouchsafe your eternal
salvation ! Amen 1" (Day of the Blessed Trinity,
1518). The other letter was to Staupitz, the vicar-
general, whom he begged to forward it to the pope.
In this, Luther indicates that the doctrine he
had maintained, had been taught him by Staupitz
himself. " I call to mind, revei'eud father, that
among those sweet and profitable discourses of
yours, which through the grace of our Lord Jesus
were the source of unspeakable consolation to us,
you treated of the subject of repentance, and that,
forthvi'ith, moved by pity for the numerous con-
sciences which are tortured by innumerable and
msupportable prescriptions as to the true way of
making confession, we welcomed your words as
words from heaven, when you said, "the only true
repentance is that ichich has its begitming in the lore of
justice and of God," and that what is commonly
stated to be the end of repentance, ought rather to
be its beginning. This saying of yours sunk into
me like the sharp arrow of the hunter. I felt
emboldened to wrestle with the Scriptures, which
teach repentance; wrestling full of charms, during
which the words of Scripture were showered from
all parts, and flew around hailing and ap])lauding
this saying. Aforetime, thei-e was no harder word
for me in Scripture than that one word, repent-
ance ; albeit, I endeavoured to dissemble before
God, and express my love of obedience. Now, no
word sounds so sweetly in my ear. So sweet and
lovely are God's commands when we learn to read
them not in books only, but in the very wounds of
the sweet Saviour!" — Both those letters are dated
from Heidelberg (May 30th, 1518), where the
A.D. 1517— 1521.
FEARS ENTERTAINED AT ROME.
Austin friars were then holding a provincial synod,
which Luther attended to maintain his doctrines
against every comer. This famous University,
only two steps from the Rhine, and, consequently,
on the gi'eat highroad of Germany, was indisputably
the most conspicuous theatre from which the new
doctrine could be declared.
Rome began to be troubled. The master of the
sacred palace, the aged Dominican Sylvestro de
Prierio, wrote against the Austin monk, in defence
of the doctrine of St. Thomas, and drew upon
himself a furious and overwhelming reply (the end
of August, 1518). Luther was immediately cited
to appear at Rome within sixty days. The emperor
Maximilian had recommended the papal court not
to precipitate matters, promising to do whatever
it should order with regard to Luther; but to no
purpose. His zeal was somewhat mistrusted ; for
certain speeches of his had travelled thither, which
sounded ill in the pope's ears. " What your monk
is doing, is not to be regarded with contempt," the
emperor had said to Pfeffinger, the elector of Sax-
ony's minister ; " the game is about to begin with
the priests. Make much of him ; it may be that
we may want him." More than once he had in-
dulged in bitter complaints of priests and clerks.
" This pope," he said, speaking of Leo X., " has
behaved to me like a knave. I can truly say that
I have never met with sincerity or good faith in
any pope; but, with God's blessing, I trust this will
be the last." This was threatening language ; and it
was also recollected that Maximilian, by way of
eflfecting a definitive reconciliation between the
empire and the holy see, had entertained the idea
of making himself pope. Leo X., therefore, took
good care not to make him the umpire in this
quarrel, which was daily growing into fresh
importance.
All Luther's hopes lay in the elector's protec-
tion. Either out of regard for his new university
or personal liking for Luther, this prince had
always taken him under his special protection. He
had been pleased to defray the expenses of his
taking his doctor's degree; and, in 1517, Luther re-
turns thanks by letter for a present of cloth for
a gown to keep him warm through the winter.
Luther had little fear that the elector would be
offended with him for an explosion, which laid all
the blame at the door of the archbishop of Mentz
and Magdebui'g, a prince sprung from the house of
Brandenburg, and, consequently, the enemy of that
of Saxony. Finally (and this was a powerful motive
to inspire him with confidence), the elector had an-
nounced that he knew no other rule of faith than
the Scriptures. Luther reminded him of this in
the following passage (March 27th, 1519): —
" Doctor J. Staupitz, my true father in Christ, told
me that, talking one day with your electoral high-
ness of those preachers who, instead of declaring
the pure word of God, preach to the people only
wretched quibbles or himian traditions, you ob-
served, that Holy Scripture speaks with such
majesty and fulness of evidence as to need none of
these weapons of disputation, compelling one to ad-
mit, ' Never man spoke like this mau. He does not
teach like the Scribes and Pharisees, but as one
having authority.' And on Staupitz's approving
those sentiments, you said to him, ' Your hand, then ;
and pledge me your word that for the future you
will preach this new doctrine.' " The natural com-
plement of this passage occurs in a manuscript life
of the elector by Spalatin: — "With what pleasure
did he not listen to sermons and i-ead God s word,
especially the Evangelists, whose beautiful and
comforting sentences were ever in his mouth ! But
that which he continually repeated was the saying
of Christ, as recorded by St. John: ' Without Me
ye can do nothing ;' and he used this text to combat
the doctrine of free-will, even before Erasmus of
Rotterdam had dared, in various publications, to
maintain this wretched liberty against God's word.
Often has he said to me, how can we have free will,
since Christ himself has said, ^ Sine me nihil potest is
faanx.' (Without me ye can do nothing )" It
would be a mistake, however, to infer from this that
Staupitz and his disciple were only instruments
in the elector's hands. The Reformation introduced
by Luther was clearly spontaneous; and the elec-
tor, as we shall have occasion to see, was alarmed
by Luther's boldness. He relished, accepted, took
advantage of, the Reformation, but would never
have begun it. On the 15th of February, 1518,
Luther writes to his prudent friend, Spalatin, the
elector's chaplain, secretary, and confidant: —
'' Look at the clamourers who go about reporting, to
my great annoyance, that all this is the work of our
most illustrious prince. To hearken to them, it is
he who has been egging me on, in order to spite the
archbishop of Magdeburg and of Mentz. I beg
you to consider whether it be worth while to apprize
the prince of this. It distresses me exceedingly that
his highness should be suspected on my account. To
become a cause of strife between such great princes
is enough to terrify one." And he holds the same
language to the elector himself, in the account he
sends him of the conference of Augsburg (Novem-
ber). On March 21st he writes to J. Lange, sub-
sequently archbishop of Saltzburg : " Our prince
has taken me and Carlstadt under his protection,
and this without waiting to be entreated. He will
not allow of ray being dragged to Rome: this they
know, and it is a thorn in their side." The inference
would be, that Luther had already received positive
assurance of protection from the elector. But, on
the 21st of August, 1518, he writes to Spalatin in a
more confidential letter: " I do not yet see how I
can avoid the censures with which I am threatened,
except the prince comes to my aid. And yet, I
would rather endure all the censures in the world
than see his highness blamed on my account. . . .
The best step I can take, in the opinion of our wise
and learned friends, is to ask the prince for a safe-
conduct {salT^im, ut Tocant, conductum per suiim do-
minium). I am sure he will refuse me; so that, they
say, I shall have a good excuse for not appearing at
Rome. Have the kindness, then, to procure me from
our most illustrious prince a rescript, to the effect
that he refuses to grant me a safe-conduct, and
leaves me, if I venture on the journey, to my own
risk and peril. You will be doing me a most im-
portant service; but it must be done quickly, for
time presses, and the day appointed is at hand."
Luther might have spared himself the trouble of
writing this letter, since the prince, though he did
not apprize him of it, was busied providing for his
safety. He had managed that Luther should be
examined by a legate in Germany, in the free city
of Augsburg, where he himself happened to be at
this very moment, no doubt to concert measures
with the magistracy for the security of Luther's
10
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1517—1521.
person in this dangei'ous interview. No doubt it is
to the fact of this invisible providence's watching
over Luther that we must attribute the restless care
of those said magistrates to pi'eserve him from any
ambush the Italians might lay for him. For his
own part, in his courage and simplicity he went
straight forward, without clearly knowing what the
prince would, or would not, do in his favour (Sept. 2).
" I have said, and I repeat, tliat I do not want our
prince, who is innocent of the whole afialr, to take
the slightest step in defence of my propositions. . .
Let him secui'e me from violence, if he can do so
without compromising his interests; if he cannot, I
am ready to face all the danger."
Caietauo de Vio, the legate, was certainly a judge
not much to be feared. He had himself written
that it was lawful to interpret Scripture without
following the torrent of the fathers {contra torren-
tem SS. patrum). This and other daring opinions
had rendered him somewhat amenable to the sus-
picion of heresy. But, selected by the pope to
compose this difference, he set about his business
like a politician, and only attacked that part of
Luther's doctrine which shook the political and
fiscal power of tlie court of Rome; keeping to the
practical question of the treasure of indulgences, with-
out recurring to the speculative question of grace.
" When I was cited to Augsburg, I obeyed the
summons, but with a strong guard, and under the
guarantee of Frederick, elector of Saxony, who had
commended me to the authorities of Augsburg.
They were exceedingly watchful over me, and
warned me not to trust mj'self to the Italians, and
to eschew all companionship with them. I did not
know, they said, what a Goth was. I remained
at Augsburg for three whole days without any safe-
conduct from the emperor ; during which interval
an Italian often came to invite me to visit the
cardinal, being discouraged by no refusal. ' You
ought to retract,' he would say; 'you have but to
utter one word, rewco. The cardinal will report
favourably of you, and you will return with honour
to your prince.' " Amongst other instances which
he adduces in order to persuade him, was that of
the famous Joachim de Flores, who, since he made
his submission, was not heretical, although he had
advanced heretical propositions.
" At the end of three days the bishop of Trent
arrived, who showed the cardinal a safe-conduct
from the empei-or. On this I waited upon him
with all humility. I sank at first on my knees,
then abased myself to the ground, and so remained
at his feet, nor did I rise until tln'ice ordered. He
was exceedingly pleased, and conceived the hope
that I should alter my resolution. The follow-
ing day, when I positively refused to retract
any thing, he asked me, ' Do you think the pope
really minds Germany ? Do you believe the
princes will go to war in your defence ? Oh, no !
Where will you find a resting-place?'
' Under heaven,' was my answer. The pope
subsequently lowered his tone, and wrote to the
Church, and even to master Spalatin and Pfeffin-
ger, begging them to give mo up to him, and to
insist on the execution of his decree. Meanwhile,
my little book and my Resolutions went, or rather
flew, in a few days, over all Europe. And so the
elector of Saxony was confirmed and fortified. He
would not carry the pope's orders into effect, and
submitted himself to the cognizance of Scripture.
Had the cardinal conducted himself with more
sense and discretion towards me, had he welcomed
me when I fell at his feet, matters would never
have gone so far. For at that time I had but a
faint notion of the papal errors. Had the pope
been silent, I would readily have held my peace.
It was then the style and custom of the court of
Rome for the pope to say, in knotty and obscure
matters, — ' By virtue of our papal powers we call
in this thing to oui'selves, annul it, and make it as
if it had never been.' On which there only re-
mained for both parties to weep. I wager the
pope would give three cardinals to have the
business still in the bag."
The following details are from a letter which
Luther wrote to Spalatin (that is, to the elector),
while he was at Augsburg, and the conference
going on (October 14th): — "For these four days
the legate has been conferring with me, or rather,
against me .... He refuses to dispute in public,
or even in private, never ceasing to repeat, ' Retract,
confess your error, whether you think it one or not;
the pope will have it so.'. ... At last, he was pre-
vailed upon to allow me to explain myself in writ-
ing, which I did in the presence of the baron of
Feilitsch, the emperor's representative; but then
the legate would have nothing to do with what I
had written, and again began to call for retractation.
He favoured me with a long discourse which he
had ferreted out of one or other of St. Thomas's
romances, and thought he had conquered me and
closed my mouth. Ten different times I tried to
speak, but he stopped me each time, thundering
and usurping the sole right of speaking. At length,
I began to raise my voice in my turn : — ' If you can
show me that this decree of your Clement VI. ex-
pressly states that the merits of Christ are the
treasure of indulgences, I retract.' God knows
into what uproarious laughter they burst out at
this. As for him, he snatched the book from me
and turned breathlessly over the leaves (fervcns et
anUelans) till he came to the passage where it
is written that Christ, by his passion, has acquired
the treasures, &c. I stopped him at this word has
acquired, . . . After dinner, he sent for the reverend
father Staupitz, and coaxed him over to induce me
to retract, adding that I could not easily find any
one better inclmed to me than himself." The dis-
putants followed a different course; reconciliation
became impossible. Luther's friend feared an
ambush on the part of the Italians. He quitted
Augsburg, leaving an appeal to the pope, when
thoroughly cognizant of the cause, and addressed a
long account of the conference to the elector. We
learn from the latter, that in the discussion he had
supported his opinions as to the pope's authority
on the council of Bale, on the university of Paris,
and on Gerson. He prays the elector not to give
him up : — " May your most illustrious highness
follow the dictates of your honour and conscience,
and not send me to the pope. The man (Luther
means the legate) has surely in his instructions no
guarantee for my safety at Rome ; and for him to
ask your most illustrious highness to send me
thither, would be asking you to give up Christian
blood, to become homicide. To Rome ! Why the
pope himself is not in safety there. They have
paper and ink enough there,and scribes and notaries
without number, and ctm easily write word in what
I have erred. It will be less expensive to proceed
A.D. 1517—1521.
LUTHER'S LETTER TO THE POPE.
II
against me, in my absence, by writing, than to make
away with me, should I be present, by treachery."
Tliese fears were well founded. The court of
Rome was about to address itself directly to the
elector of Saxony. It required Luther at any cost.
Already the legate had complained bitterly to
Frederic of Luther's presumption, and had be-
sought him to send him back to Augsburg, or to
banish him, if he would not sully his own glory,
and that of his ancestors, by protecting this
wretched monk. " I heard yesterday from Nurem-
berg that Charles von Miltitz is on his way with
three briefs from the pope (according to an eye-
witness worthy of all faith), to seize and hand me
over bodily to the pontiff. But I have appealed to
the forthcoming council." It was full time for him
to reject the pope, since, as the legate had informed
Frederic, he was already condemned at Rome.
Luther, in making this fresh protest, adhered
strictly to all the juridical forms. He avowed his
willingness to submit to the judgment of the pope,
when thorouglily cognizant of the cause; but here
the pope might err, as St. Peter himself had erred.
He appealed to the general council, which was
superior to the pope, from all the pope's decrees
against him. But he was afraid of some sudden
violence ; of being privily borne off from Wittem-
berg. " You have been misinformed," he writes
to Spalatin, " I have not taken my leave of the
people of Wittemberg. I have used, it is true, the
following or similar terms: — ' You are all aware
that I am an uncertain and unsettled preacher.
How often have I not left you without bidding you
farewell ! Should this happen agam, and I not re-
turn, consider that I have bid you farewell now,"
On December 2nd, he writes, " I am advised to ask
the prince to shut me up a prisoner in some castle,
and to be pleased to write to the legate that he has
me in a sure place, where I shall be compelled to
answer." He wrote on the lOth of the preceding
month, "It is beyond all doubt, the prince
and the university are with me. A conversation
has come to my knowledge that took place concern-
ing me at the court of the bishop of Brandenburg.
Some one observed, ' He is supported by Erasmus,
Fabricius, and other learned persons.' ' The pope
would care nothing for that,' replied the bishop,
' were not the university of Wittemberg and the
elector, too, on his side.' " Yet Luther spent the
latter part of this year (1518) in lively anxiety,
and had some thoughts of leaving Germany. " To
avoid drawing down any danger on your highness,
I will quit your dominions, and go whithersoever
God in his mercy shall conduct me, trusting, what-
ever may befall, in his divine will. I therefore I'e-
spectfully bid farewell to your highness; and among
whatever people I may take my at)ode, I shall re-
member your kindness with never-ceasing grati-
tude." At this moment, indeed, he might consider
Saxony an insecure abode. The pope was endea-
vouring to win over the elector. Charles von Miltitz
was commissioned to offer him the golden rose, a
high distinction usually conferred by the court of
Rome on kings only, as the reward of their filial
piety towards the Church. This was a difficult
trial for the elector; as it compelled him to come to
a distinct explanation, and, perhaps, to draw down
great danger upon himself. The elector's hesita-
tion is apparent from a letter of Luther's: — "The
prince was altogether against my publishing the
acts of the conference of Augsburg, but after-
wards gave me permission, and they are now print-
ed... . In his uneasiness about me, he would pi-efer
my being any where else. He summoned me to
Litchenberg, where I had a long conference with
Spalatin on the subject, and expressed my resolve,
in case the censures were fulminated, not to stay.
He told me, however, not to be in such haste to
start for France." This was written on the 1 3th
of December; on the 20th, Luther's doubts were
past. The elector had returned for answer, with
true diplomatic reserve, that he professed himself
a most obedient son of holy mother Church, and
entertained a great respect for the pontifical sanc-
tity, but requii-ed an inquiry into the matter by
disinterested judges; a certain means of ensuring
procrastination, since, in the interim, incidents
might occur to lessen or delay the danger. To
gain time was every thing. In fact, the emperor
died in the following January; the interregnum
commenced, and Frederic became, by Maximilian's
own choice, vicar of the empire until the hour of
election. Feeling himself secure, Luther addressed
(March 3rd, 1519) a haughty letter to the pope,
but respectfully worded: — "Most holy father, I
cannot support the weight of your wrath, yet know
not how to escape from the burthen. Thanks to
the opposition and attacks of my enemies, my words
have spread more widely than I could have hoped
for, and they have sunk too deeply into men's
hearts for me to retract them. In these our days,
Germany flourishes in erudition, reason, and genius;
and if I would honour Rome before her, I must
beware of retractation, which would be only sully-
ing the Roman Church still further, and exposing
it to public accusation and contempt. It is they
who, abusing the name of your holiness, have made
their absurd preaching subserve their infamous
avarice, and have sullied holy things with the
abomination and reproach of Egypt, that have
done the Roman Church injury and dishonour
with Germany. And, as if this was not mischief
enough, it is against me, who have striven to oppose
those monsters, that their accusations are directed.
But I call God and men to witness, most holy
father, that I have never wished, and do not now
desire to touch the Roman Church or your sacred
authority; and that I acknowledge most explicitly
that this Church rules over all, and that nothing,
heavenly or earthly, is superior to it, save Jesus
Ciirist our Lord."
From this moment, Luther had made up his
mind. A month or two before, indeed, he had
written, " The pope will not hear of a judge, and I
will not be judged by the pope. So he will be the
text, and I the gloss." In another letter he says
to Spalatin (March 13), " I am in travail with St.
Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, and am thinking of
a sermon on the Passion ; whilst, in addition to my
ordinary lessons, I teach children of an evening,
and explain the Lord's prayer to them. Along
with this, I turn over the decretals for matter for
my new dispute, and find Christ so altered and cru-
cified in them, that (hark in your ear) I am not
sure that the pope is not antichrist himself, or the
apostle of antichrist." However far Luther might
go, the pope had henceforward little chance of
tearing his favourite theologian- from a power-
ful prince, on whom a majority of the electoi's
were conferring the empire. Miltitz changed his
12
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1517—1521.
tone, and stated tliat the pope would even yet be
contented with a retractation. He met Luther as
a friend, flattered him, owned that lie had got the
whole world with him away from the pope, stated
that on his journey he could scarcely find two men
out of five to defend the papacy, tried to persuade
him to go and explain to the archbishop of Toledo,
but could not prove that he was authorized to make
this proposition, either by the pope or the arch-
bishop. The advice was suspicious ; Luther was
aware that he had been burnt in eifigy at Rome
{ papyraccus Martinus in campo Florw publlce com-
bustiii<, cxecratuf, derotus). He returned a cool reply
to Miltitz, and apprized him that one of his envoys
had inspired such suspicions, at Witteniberg, as to
have narrowly escaped being thrown into the Elbe.
" If, as you intimate, my refusal will compel you to
come yourself, God gi'ant you a hapj^y journey.
For my part, I am extremely busy, and have nei-
ther time nor money for such excursions. Fare-
well, excellent man." (May IJth.) On Miltitz's
arrival in Germany, Luther had said that he would
hold his tongue, provided his opponents would
theirs ; but they released him from keeping his
word, for doctor Eck solemnly defied him to a dis-
putation at Leipsic, and the faculties of Paris, Lou-
vauie, and Cologne, condemned his propositions.
In order to make a decent appearance at Leijisic,
Luther was obliged to ask the parsimonious elector,
who had forgotten to clothe him for two or three
years, for a dress ; his letter is a curiosity : " I
beseech your electoral grace to have the kindness
to buy me a white cope and a black cope. I hum-
bly ask for the white one, but your highness owes
me the black, having promised it to me two or
three years back ; only Pfeffinger is brought to
untie his purse-strings with such difficulty, that I
have been forced to buy one for myself. I humbly
pray your highness, who considered that the Psalter
deserved a black cope, to deign not to think the St.
Paul unworthy of a white one." Luther felt, by
this time, so completely secure, that not content
with repairing to Leipsic to plead in his own de-
fence, he assumed the offensive at Wittemberg.
" He had the effrontery," says his catholic biogra-
pher, Cochlteus, " he had the effrontery, with the
authority of the prince, his protector, to issue a
solemn summons to the ablest inquisitors, meu
who would think they could swallow iron and split
the rock, to a disputation, and the prince not only
offered them a safe-conduct, but undertook to lodge
them and pay their expenses." Meanwhile, Lu-
ther's principal opponent, doctor Eck, had re-
paired to Rome to solicit his condemnation. Lu-
ther was sentenced beforehand ; and it now only
remained for him to judge his judge, and pronounce
sentence of condemnation on authority, in the sight
of the people. This he did in his terrible book on
the Captivity of Babylon, in which he contended
that the Church was captive, and that Jesus Christ,
constantly profaned in the idolatry of the mass, and
lost sight of in the dogma of transubstantiation,
was the pope's prisoner. With daring freedom, he
explains in his preface, how he has been gradually
forced on by his adversaries ; " Whether willingly
or not, 1 improve every day, pushed as I am, and
kept in wind by so many masters of fence at once.
Two years ago, I wrote ou indulgences ; but in a
style which makes me deeply regret I ever pub-
lished the work. At that period, I was still mar-
vellously enamoured of the papal power, and durst
not fling indulgences entirely over. Besides, I
saw them approved of by numbers of persons,
whilst I was the only one who undertook to set
this stone rolling (Iwc xolvere saximi). Since then,
thanks to Sylvester, and other brothers who have
defended them stoutly, I perceived that the whole
was an imposture, invented by the flatterers of
Rome, to dispossess men of faith and take posses-
sion of their purse. Would to God I could induce
booksellers and all who have read my writings on
indulgences, to burn them, and not to leave a line
behind, so that they would substitute for all I have
said ou the subject, this oi\e&xmn\—Indidijencesare
bubbles devised by the sycophants of Rome ! Next
Eck, Eniser, and their band, proceeded to take us
in hand on the question of the pope's supremacy.
'Twould be luigrateful towards those learned per-
sonages not to acknowledge that the ti'ouble to
which they put themselves was not thrown away
upon me. Previously, I had denied that the pa-
pacy was of divine, yet still admitted that it was of
human, right ; but, after hearing and reading the
super-subtle subtleties on which these poor people
found the rights of their idol, I came to the perfect
and satisfactory understanding and conviction, that
the I'eign of the pope is that of Babylon, and of
Nimrod, the mighty hunter. Wherefore, I earnestly
pray booksellers and readers (that nothing may be
wanting to my good friends' success), to commit to
the flames my writings on this subject also, and
to abide by the following axiom : — The pope is the
mighty hunter, the Nimrod of the Roman episcopacy ! "
At the same time, to make it clear that he was
assailing the papacy, rather than the pope, he ad-
dressed a long letter, in both languages, to Leo
X., in which he denied all personal feeling against
him. " Though surrounded by the monsters of
the age, against whom I have been these three
years struggling, my thoughts ought, once at least,
most honourable father, to revert to thee. The
witness borne to thy renown by men of letters, and
thy irreproachable life, ought to place thee beyond
all attacks. I am not such a simpleton as to blame,
when all the world praises thee. I have called
thee a Daniel in Babylon, and have proclaimed thy
innocence. Yes, dear Leo, I think of thee as of
Daniel in the pit, Ezekiel among the scorpions.
What canst thou, alone, against these monsters ;
thou, and some three or four learned and virtuous
cardinals ? You would all infallibly be poisoned
did you dare attempt to reform such countless cor-
ruptions. . . . The doom has gone forth against
the coiu't of Rome. The measure of God's wrath
has been filled up ; for that court hates councils,
dreads the name of reform, and fulfils the words
uttered of its mother, of whom it is said, ' We would
have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake
Babylon.' Oh, hapless Leo, to sit on that accursed
throne ! I speak the truth to thee, for I desire thy
good. If St. Bernard felt pity for his pope Euge-
nius, what must be our feelings now that corrup-
tion is three hundred years the worse \ Ay, thou
wouldst thank me for thy eternal salvation, were I
once able to dash in pieces this dungeon, this hell
in which thou art held captive."
When the bull of condemnation reached Ger-
man}', the whole people was in commotion. At
Erfurth the students took it out of the booksellers'
shops, tore it in pieces, and threw it into the
A.D. 1517—1521.
BURNING OF THE PAPAL BULL.
13
river with the poor pun, " A bubble {bulla) it is,
and as a bubble so it should swim." Luther in-
stantly published his pamphlet, Aija'mst the Exe-
crable Bull of Antichrist. On December 10, 1520,
he burnt it at the city gates, and on the same day
wrote to Spalatin, through whom he usually com-
mimicated with the elector: — " This lOth day of
December, in the year 1520, at the ninth hour of
the day, were burnt at Wittemberg, at the east
gate, near the holy cross, all the pope's books, the
Decree, the DecreXals, the Extravagante of Clement
VI., Leo X.'s last bull, the Amjelic Sum, Eck's
Chri/soprasus, and some other works of Eck's and
Eraser's. Is not this news ?" He says in the
public notice which he caused to be di-awn up of
these proceedings, " If any one ask me why I
have done this, my reply is, that it is an ancient
practice to burn bad books. The apostles burnt
five thousand deniers' worth of them." The tra-
dition runs that he exclaimed on throwing the
book of the Decretals into the flames, " Thou hast
tormented the Lord's holy one, may the everlasting
fire torment and consume thee !" These things
were news, indeed, as Luther said. Until then,
most sects and heresies had sprung up in secret,
and conceived themselves fortunate if they re-
mained unknown ; but now a monk starts up who
treats with the pope as equal with equal, and con-
stitutes himself the judge of the head of the
Church. The chain of tradition is broken, unity
shattered, the i-obe icithout seam rent. It must not
be supposed that Luther himself, with all his
violence, took this last step without pain. It was
uprooting from his heart by one pull the whole of
the venerable past in which he had been cradled.
It is true that he believed he had retained the
Scriptures for his own ; but then they were the
Scriptures with a different interpretation from
what had been put upon them for a thousand
years. All this his enemies have often said ; but
not one of them has said it more eloquently than
he himself. " No doubt," he writes to Erasmus in
the opening of his sorry book, De Servo Arbitrio
(The Will not Free), "no doubt you feel some
hesitation when you see arrayed before you so
numerous a succession of learned men, and the
unanimous voice of so many centuries illustrated
by deeply read divines, and by great martyrs,
glorified by numerous miracles, as well as more
recent theologians and countless academies, coun-
cils, bishops, pontiffs. On this side are found
erudition, genius, numbers, greatness, loftiness,
power, sanctity, miracles, and what not beside ?
On mine, Wickliff, Laurentius Valla, Augustin,
(although you forget him,) and Luther, a poor
man, a mushroom of yestei'day, standing alone
with a few friends, without such enidition, genius,
numbers, greatness, sanctity, or miracles. Take
them all together, they could not cure a lame
horse. . . . Et alia qua! tu lolurlma fando enume-
rare rales (and innumerable other things you
could mention). For what are we ? What the
wolf said of Philomel, Vox et praterea nihil (a
sound, no more). I own, my dear Erasmus, you
are justified in hesitating before all these things ;
ten years siuee, I hesitated like you. . . . Could I
suppose that this Troy, which had so long vic-
toriously resisted so many assaults, would fall in
one day ? I solemnly call God to witness that 1
should have continued to fear, and should even
now be hesitating, had not my conscience and the
truth compelled me to speak. You know tliat my
heart is not a rock; and had it been, yet beateii
by such billows and tempests, it would have been
shivered to atoms when all this mass of authority
was launched at my head, like a deluge ready
to overwhelm me." Elsewhere he writes : " . . .
Holy Scripture has taught me how perilous and
fearful it is to raise one's voice in God's church,
to speak in the midst of those who will be your
judges, when, on the day of judgment, you shall
find yourself in presence of God, under the eye of
the angels, all creation seeing, listening, lianging
upon the divine word. Assuredly when this
thought rises to my mind, my earnest desire is
for silence, and the sponge for my writings
How hard, how fearful to live to render an
account to God of every idle word * !" On March
27, 1510, he writes, "I was alone, and hurried
unpre])ared into this busine.ss. I admitted many
essential points in the pope's favcjur, for was I, a
poor, miserable monk, to set myself up against the
majesty of the pope, before whom the kings of the
earth (what do I say ? earth itself, hell, and
heaven) trembled ? . . . How I suffered the first
and second year. Ah ! little do those confident
spirits who since then have attacked the pope so
proudly and presumptuously, know of the de-
jection of spirits, not feigned and assumed, but too
real, or rather the despair which I went through.
. . . Unable to find any light to guide me in dead
or mute teachers (I mean the writings of theo-
logians and jurists), I longed to consult the living
council of the churches of God, to the end that if
any godly persons could be found, illumined by
the Holy Ghost, they would take compassion on
me, and be pleased to give me good and safe
counsel for my own welfare and that of all Christen-
dom ; but it was impossible for me to discover
them. I saw only the pope, the cardinals, bishops,
theologians, canonists, monks, priests ; and it was
from them I expected enlightenment. For I had so
fed and saturated myself with their doctrine,
that I was unconscious whether I were asleep or
awake. . . . Had I at that time braved the pope
as I now do, I should have looked for the earth
instantly to open and swallow me up alive, like
Korah and Abiram. ... At the name of the
church I shuddered, and offered to give way. In
1518, I told cardinal Caietano, at Augsburg, that
I would thenceforward be mute ; only praying
him, in all humility, to impose the same silence on
my advei'saries, and hush their clamours. Far
from meeting my wishes, he threatened to con-
demn every thing I had taught, if I would not
retract. Now I had already published the Cate-
chism to the edification of many souls, and was
bound not to allow it to be condemned. ... So I
was driven to attempt what I considered to be the
greatest of evils. . . . But it is not my object to
tell my history here ; but only to confess my folly,
ignorance, and weakness, and to awe, by reciting
" It is curious to compare these words of Luther's with
the very different passage in Rousseau's Confessions : —
"Let the trumpet of the last iudgment sound when it will,
I will present myself with this book in my hand before the
Judge of all, and will say aloud, ' Here is what 1 have done,
what I have thought, what I was.' .... and then let any
one say, if he dare, ' 1 was better than that man.'"
14
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1517— 152L
my own sufferings, those presumptuous bawlers
or scribblers, who have not borne the cross, or
known the temptations of Satan. . . ."
Against the tradition of the middle age and the
authority of the church, Luther sought a refuge in
the Scriptures, anterior to tradition, and superior
to the church herself. He translated the Psalms,
and wrote his Postils to the Gospels and Epistles.
At no other period of his life did he so approximate
to mysticism. He took his stand at this time on St.
John no less than on St. Paul, and seemed on the
point of running through all the stages of the doc-
trine of love, without any misgivings of the fatal
consequences which resulted thence to man's
liberty and morality. There are, he lays it down in
his work on Christian Liberty, two men in man— the
inner man, the soul, the outward man, the body ;
each distinct from the other. As works proceed
from the outward man, their effects cannot affect the
soul: if the body frequent profane places, eat,
drink, pray not with the lips, and neglect ail tlie
hypocrites do, the soul will remain imaffected. The
soul is united by faith to Christ, as the wife to her
husband. All is, then, in common between the two,
the good as well as evil We, who believe in
Christ, are all kings and pontiffs. Raised by his
faith above everything, the Christian becomes, by
this spiritual power, lord of all things, so that
nothino- can injure him, i»Bo omnia ei subjecta cogun-
tiir senlre ad salutem (rather, all things are subject
to him and compelled to minister to his salvation).
.... If I believe, all things, good and bad, turn
to my profit. This is the inestimable power and
liberty of the Christian. " If yon feel your heart
hesitate and doubt, it is high time for you to repair
to the priest, and seek absolution for your sins.
You ought to prefer dying a thousand times to
doubting the judgment of the priest, which is the
judgment of God; and, if you can believe in this
judgment, your heart ought to laugh with joy, and
laud God, who, through man's intermediation, has
comforted thy conscience. If you think yourself
unworthy of pardon, it is because you have not yet
done enough, because you are too little instructed in
faith, and more than it needeth in works. It is a
thousand times more important to believe piously
in absolution than to be worthy of it and make
atonement. Faith renders you worthy, and consti-
tutes the true atonement. Man who, without this,
through the mere restlessness of his heart, never per-
forms any good work, can then serve his God joy-
fully; and this is what is called the sweet burden of
our Lord, Jesus Christ." (Sermon on Justification,
preached at Leipsic in 1519.) This dangerous doc-
trine was welcomed by the people and by the
majority of the learned. Erasmus, the most cele-
brated of the latter, seems to have been the only
one who perceived its consequences. Of a critical
and negative cast of genius, emulating the Italian
bel esprit, Laurentius Valla, who had written a work,
De Libera Arbitrw (on Free-will), in the fifteenth
century, he himself wrote against Luther under the
same title. In 1519, he received the advances of
the monk of Wittemberg coldly. Luther, who felt
how necessary the support of the learned was to
him, had written complimentary letters (a.d. 1518,
1519) toReuchlin and Erasmus, which last returned
a cold and highly significant answer (a.d. 1519):
" I reserve all my powers to contribute to the re-
vival of elegant literature; and it strikes me that
greater progress is to be made by politic modera-
tion {modestia civUi) than by passion. It is thus
that Christ has brought the world to be subject
unto him, and thus that Paul abolished the Judaic
law, by applying himself to the interpretation of the
letter. It is better to exclaim against such as abuse
the power given to priests than the priests them-
selves; and so, likewise, with regard to kings.
Instead of bringing the schools into contempt, it
would be well to win them back to healthier studies.
Whenever the question is of things too deeply
rooted in the mind to be eradicated by one pull,
discussion and close and cogent reasoning are to be
preferred to affirmations. . . . And it is essential
to be on one's guard against saying or doing any-
thing with an arrogant or rebellions air; such, in
my opinion, is the course of proceeding consonant
to the spirit of Christ. But I do not say this by way
of teaching you what you ought to do; only to en-
courage you to go on as you are now doing." Such
timid precautions suited neither the man nor the
hour. Enthusiasm was at its height. Nobles and
people, castles and free towns, rivalled each other in
zeal and enthusiasm for Luther. At Nurembnrg,
at Strasburg, and even at Mentz, his smallest pam-
phlets were emulously caught up as fast as they ap-
peared. The sheets were hurried and smuggled
into the shops, all wet from the press, and were
greedily devoured by the aspiring litterateurg of the
German Companionship, by the poetic tinmen, the
learned cordwainers: the good Hans-Sachs shook off
his wonted vulgarity, left his shoe unfinished, wrote
his best verses, his best production, and sang with
bated voice the mgJttinfjale of Wittemberg, whose
voice resounded every where. . . . Nothing seconded
Luther more powerfully than the zeal of the printers
and booksellers in behalf of the new ideas. " The
works which were favourable to him," says a con-
temporary, " were printed by the printers with
minutest care, and often at their own expense, and
large numbers of copies struck off. Many old
monks, too, who had returned to a secular life, lived
on Luther's works, and hawked them throughout
Germany. The Catholics could only get their works
printed by high pay, and even then they were printed
in so slovenly a manner as to swarm with errors, so
as to seem the pi'oductions of illiterate men. And
if any printer, more conscientious than the rest, did
them more justice, he was jeered and plagued in
the market-places and at the fairs of Frankfort, for
a Papist and a slave to the priests."
Whatever the zeal of the cities, it was to the
nobles that Luther had chiefly appealed, and they
answered his summons with a zeal, which he him-
self was often obliged to moderate. In 1519,
he published in Latin a Defence of the articles
condemned by the bull of Leo X., which he dedicated
as follows, to the baron Fabian von Feilitzsch: — "It
has struck me to be desirable, in future, to ad-
dress you laymen, a new order of priests, and,
with God's will, to make a happy beginning under
the favourable auspices of your name. May the
present work, then, commend me, or rather the
Christian doctrine, to you and all the nobles." He
was desirous to dedicate the translation of this
work to Franz von Sickingen, and another to the
count of Mansfeld, but he abstained, he says, " from
fear of awakening the jealousy of many others,
and, in particular, that of the nobility of Fran-
conia." The same year he published his violent
A.D. 1517—1521.
LUTHER'S PERSON AND MANNERS.
Id
pamphlet, To the Christian nobility of Germany, on
the amelioration of Christianity. Foui' thousand copies
were sold at ouce. The leading nobles, Luther's
friends, were Sylvester von Schauenberg, Franz von
Siekingeii, Taubenheim, and Uhnch von Hutten.
Schauenberg had confided the education of liis
young son to Melanchthon, and had ofi'ered to assist
the elector of Saxony, arms in hand, should the
elector be exposed to any danger in the cause of
reform. Taubenheim and others sent Luther money.
" I have had a hundred pieces of gold from Tau-
benheim, and fifty from Schart, so that I begui to
fear God's paying me here below ; but I have
vowed that I will not be thus gorged, but will give
back all." The Margrave of Brandenburg had
begged a visit from him : Sickingen and Hutten
promised him their support against all and sundry.
"Hutten," he writes, " addz-essed me a lettei', in
September, 1520, burmnij with wrath against the
Roman pontiff, saying that lie will fall with sword
and pen on the sacerdotal tyranny. He is "indig-
nant at the pope's having attempted his life with
both the dagger and the bowl, and has sunnnoned
the bishop of JMentz, in order that he may send him
to Rome bound hand and foot." He goes on to say,
" You see what Hutten is seeking; but I would not
have violence and murder employed in the cause
of the gospel, and have written to this efl'ect."
Meanwhile the emperor summoned Luther to appear
at Worms before the imperial diet. Both parties,
friends and enemies, were about to come into
presence. " Would to God," said Hutten, " I
might be present at the diet ; I would set things
in motion, and would very soon excite a disturb-
ance." On the 20th of April, he writes to Luther,
" What atrocities are these I hear ! There is no
fury comparable to the fury of these men. I
plainly see we shall have to come to swords, bows,
arrows, cannons. Summon up thy courage, father,
laugh at these wild beasts. I see the number of
thy partisans daily increasing ; thou wilt not lack
defenders. Numbers have come to me, saying,
' God grant he may not lose heart, that he may
answer stoutly, that he may not give way to any
fear!'" At the same time, Hutten sent letters in
every direction to the magistrates of the towns, in
order to strike a league between them and the
nobles of the Rhine ; in other words, to arm
them against the ecclesiastical provinces *. He
wrote to Pirkeimer, one of the chief magis-
trates at Nuremberg. " Cheer and animate your
brethren; I am in hopes you will find partisans in
towns which are inspired by the love of liberty.
Franz von Sickingen is for us; he burns with zeal.
He is saturated with Luther. I make him read
his pamphlets at meal-time. He has sworn not to
fail the cause of Uberty ; and what he has said, he
will do. Preach him up to your fellow-citizens ;
there is no greater soul in Germany." Luther
had his partisans even in the assembly of Worms.
Some one avowed in full diet an agreement to de-
fend him, sworn to by four hundred nobles, adding
Biintschuh, Buntschuh (the rallying cry, as will
afterwards be seen, of the insurgent peasants). The
catholics were not even very sure of the emperor.
Hutten writes, whilst the diet is sittmg, " Ctesar,
the report runs, has made up his mind to side with
* See, In the Elucidations, the Dialogue of the Robbers,
written by Hutten, in the view of combuiiug the nobles and
the burgesses against the priests.
the pope." The Lutherans mustered strong in the
town, and among the people. Hermann Busch
writes Hutten word that a priest came out of the
imperial palace with two Spanish soldiers, to en-
deavour to make a seizure of eighty copies of the
Captivity of Babylon, which were on sale close to the
gates of the palace, but that he was quickly obliged
to fly back into the palace for safety ; still, in order
to induce Hutten to take up arms, he goes on to de-
scribe how the Spaniards caracole haughtily on their
mules, through the principal thoroughfares of
Worms, and how the intimidated multitude retire
before them.
Cochlasus, the catholic biographer of Luther,
describes the reformer's journey in a satiric strain:
— "A conveyance was prepared for him resembling
a litter, and so closed in as to shelter him from the
weather. He was surrounded by learned indi-
viduals, the provost Jonas, doctor Schurff, Amsdorf
the theologian, &c. ; and he was received wher-
ever he passed by crowds of people. Good cheer
reigned in the hostelries where he put up, and many
a merry cup was quaffed, and even music heard.
Luther himself, in order that he might become
the cynosure of all eyes, played on the harp like
another Orpheus, a tonsured and cowled Orpheus.
And although the emperor's safe conduct set forth
that he was not to preach by the way, he, never-
theless, preached at Erfurth on Low Sunday, and
published his sermon." This picture of Luther
does not exactly' assimilate with that drawn by a
contemporary shortly before the diet of Worms.
" Martin is of the middle size, and so emaciated
by care and study, that you might count every
bone in his body. Yet he is still in the very prime
of life. His voice is clear and penetrating. Power-
ful in doctrine, admirably read in the Scriptures,
almost every verse in which he has by heart, he
has acquired the Greek and Hebrew languages, in
order to be enabled to compare and form a judg-
ment on the translation of the Bible. He never has
to stop, having facts and words at will (sylva
ingens rerborum et rerurn). His manners are
agreeable and easy, untinetured by severity or
pride; and he is even no enemy of the pleasures of
life ; being lively and good humoured in society,
and seeming everywhere quite at his ease and
free from any sense of alarm, despite the
dreadful threats of his adversaries. So that it is
difficult to believe that this man undertakes
such great things without the Divine protection.
Almost the only thing with which the world re-
proaches him is, being too bitter in retort, and,
shrinking from no insulting expression." We are
indebted to Luther himself for an admh-able ac-
count of the proceedings at the diet; an account
that, generally speaking, agrees with those given
by his enemies. " When the herald delivered me
the summons on the Tuesday in Passion-week, and
brought me a safe-conduct from the emperor and
several princes, the same safe-conduct was, on the
very next day, the Wednesday, violated at Worms,
where I was condemned and my works burnt.
This news reached me when 1 w-as at Erfurth.
The sentence of condemnation was already pla-
carded in all the towns; so that the herald himself j
asked me whether I was still minded to go to
Worms ? Although full of fears and doubts, 1
replied, ' I will go, though there should be there
as many devils as tiles on the roofs !' Even on
16
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
A.D. 1517—1521.
my arriving at Oppenheim, near Worms, master
Bucer met me, to dissuade me from entering the
city. Sglapian, the emperor's confessor, had gone
to him to beg him to warn me not to enter Worms,
for 1 was doomed to be bm-nt there! I should do
better, he said, to stay in the neighbourhood with
Franz von Sickingen, who would gladly receive me.
All this was done by these poor beings to hinder
me from appearing ; since, had I delayed only
three days, my safe-conduct would have been no
longer available; they would have shut the gates,
refused to Hsten to me, and have tyrannically con-
demned me. But I went forward in the simplicity of
my heart, and as soon as I was within sight of the
city, wrote to inform Spalatin of my arrival, and
ask where I was to put up. They were all
thunder-struck at my unexpected an-ival ; for they
had expected that their stratagems and my own
terror would have kept me outside the walls. Two
nobles, the lord of Hirsfeld and John Schott,
fetched me, by the elector of Saxony's orders, to
their own lodgings. But no prince called upon
me; only some counts and nobles who had a great
regard for me. It was they who had laid before
his imperial majesty the four hundred charges
against the clergy, with a petition for the reform
of cleric 1 abuses, which, if neglected, they must,
they said, take upon themselves. They all owe
their deliverance to my gospel (preaching). The
pope wrote to the emperor to disregard the safe-
conduct, and the bishops egged him on to it; but
the princes and the states would not consent, fear-
ing the uproar that would ensue. All this greatly
added to my consideration ; they must have stood
in greater awe of me than I of them. Indeed, the
young landgrave of Hesse asked to hear me,
visited me, talked with me, and said, as he took
his leave, 'Dear doctor, if you are in the right,
may our Lord God be your aid.' As soon as I
arrived, I wrote to Sglapian, the emperor's con-
fessor, begging him to have the goodness to come
and see me, as his inclination and leisure might
serve. But he declined, saying that it would be
useless. »
" I was summoned in due form, and appeared
before the council of the imperial diet in the Guild-
hall, where the emperor, the electors, and the
princes were assembled*. Doctor Eck, the official
of the bishop of Treves, began, and said to me,
« Martin, you are called here to say whether you
acknowledge the books on the table there to be
yours V and he pointed to them. ' I believe so,' I
answered. But Doctor Jerome Schurif instantly
added, ' Read over their titles.' When this was
done, I said, ' Yes, these books are mine.' He then
asked me, ' Will you disavow them V J replied,
' Most gracious lord emperor, some of the writings
are controversial, and in them I attack my adver-
saries. Others are didactic and doctrinal; and of
these I neither can nor will retract an iota, for it is
God's word. But, as regards my controversial
writings, if I have been too violent, or have gone too
far against any one, I am ready to reconsider the
matte'r, provided I have time for reflection.' I was
allowed a day and a night. The next day I was
* There were present at the diet, besides the emperor,
six electors, one archduke, two landgraves, five margraves,
twenty-seven dukes, and numbers of counts, archbishops,
bishops, Sc; in all, two hundred and six persons.
summoned by the bishops and others who were to
deal with me to make me reti-act. I told them,
' God's word is not mine, I cannot give it up; but
in all else my desire is to be obedient and docile.'
The margrave Joachim then took up the word, and
said, ' Sir doctor, as far as I can understand, you
will allow yourself to be counselled and advised,
except on those points affecting Scripture ?' ' Yes,'
I answered, ' such is my wish.' They then told me
that I ought to defer all to the imperial majesty;
but I would not consent. They asked me if they
themselves were not Christians, and able to decide
on such things ? To this I answered, ' Yes, pro-
vided it be without wrong or offence to the Scrip-
tures, which I desire to uphold. I cannot give up
that which is not mine.' They insisted, ' You ought
to rely upon us, and believe that we shall decide
I'ightly.' ' I am not very ready to believe that they
will decide in my favour against themselves, who
have but just now passed sentence of condemnation
upon me, though under safe-conduct. But look
what I will do: treat me as you like, and I will
forego my safe-conduct and give it up to you.' On
this, baron Frederick von Feilitzsch, burst forth with,
'And enough, indeed, if not too much.' They then
said, ' At least, give up a few articles to us.' I an-
swered, ' In God's name, I do not desire to defend
those articles which do not relate to Scripture.'
Hereupon, two bishops hastened to tell the emperor
that I retracted. On which, the bishop *** sent
to ask me if I had consented to refer the matter to
the emperor and the empire \ I replied that I had
never, and vvould never, consent to it. So, I held
out alone against all. My doctor and the rest were
ill-pleased at my tenacity. Some told me that if I
would defer the whole to them, they would in their
turn forego and cede the articles which had been
condemned by the council of Constance. To all this
I replied, ' Here is my body and my life.'
" Cochlseus then came, and said to me, ' Martin,
if you will forego your safe-conduct, I will dispute
with you.' This, in my simplicity, I would have con-
sented to, had not Doctor Jerome Schurff inter-
posed, laughing ironically, with, ' Ay, forsooth,
that's what is wanted. 'Tis not an unfair offer; who
would be such a fool V . . . So I remained under
the safe-conduct. Some worthy individuals, besides,
had interposed with, ' How ? You would bear him
off prisoner ? That can't be.' Whilst this was
going on, there came a doctor from the margrave
of Baden, who endeavoured to move me by high-
sounding words. ' I ought,' he said, ' to do and
sacrifice much for the love of charity and mainte-
nance of peace and union, and to avoid disturbance.
Obedience was due to the imperial majesty as to
the highest authority, and all occasion of scandal
in the world ought to be sedulously avoided ; conse-
quently, I ought to retract. ' I heartily desire,' was
my answer, ' in the name of charity, to obey and do
everything in what is not against faith and the
honour of Christ.' Then the chancellor of Treves
said to me, ' Martin, you are disobedient to the im-
perial majesty, wherefore you have leave to depart
under the safe-conduct you possess.' I answered,
' It has been done as it has pleased the Lord. And
you, in your turn, consider where you are left.'
Thus, I took my departure in my simplicity, without
remarking or understanding all their subtleties.
Then they put into execution the cruel edict of the
law, which gave every one an opportunity of taking
A.D. 1517—1521.
DIET OF WORMS.
17
vengeance on his enemy, under pretence of his
being addicted to the Lutheran heresy; and yet the
tyrants have at last been obliged to revoke all those
acts of theirs. And it befel me on this wise at
Worms, where, however, I had no other support
than the Holy Ghost."
Some other curious details occur in a more ex-
tended account of the conference at Worms, written
immediately after it, and, perhaps, by Luther,
though he is spoken of in it in the third person: —
" The day after Luther's arrival at Worms, at
four o'clock in the afternoon, the master of the
ceremonies of the empire, and the herald who had
accompanied him from Wittemberg, came for him
to his hostelry called The German Court, and led
hira to the town-hall by secret passages, to escape
the crowd whicli lined the streets. Notwithstand-
ing this precaution, numbers hastened to the doors
of the town-hall and ti'ied to enter with Luther,
but were hindered by the guai'ds. Many climbed to
the roofs in order to see doctor Martin. Wheu he
entei-ed the hall, many nobles came up to him one
after the other, with words of encouragement :
'Be bold,' they said to him, 'speak like a man,
and have no fear of those who can kill bodies, but
who are powerless against souls.' ' Monk,' said
the famous captain George Frundsberg, laying
his hand on his shoulder, ' look to it ; you are
about to hazard a more perilous march than we
liave ever done. But if you are Ln the right road,
God will not forsake you.' Duke John of Weimar
had supplied him with the money for his journey.
Luther replied both in Latin and in German to
the questions put to him. He reminded the as-
sembly at first that there were many things Ln his
works w^hich had met with the approbation even
of his adversaries, and urged that imdoubtedly
it could not be this part which he was called upon
to revoke. Then he went on as follows : ' The
second portion of my works comprises those in
which I have attacked papacy and the papists, as
iiaving by false doctrine and evil life and examples
afflicted Christianity both in the things of the
body and those of the soul. Now, no one can
deny, &c. . . . Yet the popes have themselves
taught in their Decretals that such of the pope's
constitutions as may be opposed to the Gospel or
the Fathers, are to be considered false and of no
authority. Were I then to revoke this portion, I
should only fortify the pa])ists in their tyranny
and oppi'ession, and open doors and windows to
their horrible impieties. ... It would be said
that I had recanted my charges against them at
the order of his imperial majesty and the empire.
God ! what a disgraceful cloak I should become
for their perversity and tyranny ! The thii'd and
last portion of my writings is of a polemical
character. And herein I confess that I have often
ween more rough and violent than religion and my
/gown warrant. I do not give myself out for a
y/ saint. It is not my life and conduct that I am
discussing before you, but the doctrine of Jesus
Christ. Nevertheless, I do not think that it will
suit me to retract this more than the rest ; since
here, too, I should only be approving of the
tyranny and impiety which persecute God's peo-
ple. I am only a man. I can defend my doctrine
only after my divine Saviour's example, who,
when smote by the servant of the high priest, said
to him, ' If 1 have spoken evil, bear witness of
the evil.' If then the Lord himself asked to be
interrogated, and that by a sorry slave, how much
more may I, who am but dust and ashes, and may
well fall into error, ask to be allowed to justify
myself with regard to my doctrine «... If Scrip-
ture testimony be against me, I will retract with
all my heart, and will be the first to cast my books
into the flames. . . . Beware lest the reign of our
young and much to be praised emperor Charles
(who is, with God, our present and great hope)
should so have a fatal beginning, and an equally
lamentable continuance and end. . . . Therefore
with all humility, I beseech your imperial majesty
and your electoral and seignorial highnesses, not
to allow yourselves to be indisposed towards my
doctrine, save my advei-saries produce just and
convincing reasons.'
" After this speech, the emperor's orator started
to his feet, and said that Luther had spoken
beside the question, that what had been once
decided by councils, could not be again handled as
doubtful ; and that, consequently, all he was asked
was to say simply and solely whether he retracted
or not. Luther then resumed as follows : ' Since
your imperial majesty and your higimesses ask
me for a short and plain answer, I will give
you one without teeth or horns. Except I can be
convinced by Holy Scripture, or by clear and
indisputable reasons from other sources (for I
cannot defer to the pope only, or to councils which
have so often proved fallible), I neither can nor
will revoke anything. As it has been found im-
possible to refute the evidences that I have quoted,
my conscience is a prisoner to God's word ; and
no one can be compelled to act against his con-
science. Here I stand ; I cannot act otherwise.
God be my aid. Amen !' The electors and states
of the empire retired to consult on this answer of
Luther's ; and, after long deliberation, selected
the judge of the bishops' court at Treves to
refute him. 'Martin,' he said, 'you have not
answered with the modesty becoming your con-
dition. Your reply does not touch the question
propounded to yom . . . What is the good of again
discussing points which the Church and the coun-
cils have condemned for so many centuries ? . . . .
If those who oppose the decrees of councils were
to force the Church to convince them of their
errors through the medium of books, there would
be an end to all fixity and certainty in Christen-
dom ; and this is the reason his majesty asks you
to answer plainly yes or no, whether you will
retract.' On this, Luther besought the emperor
not to allow of his being forced to retract in oppo-
sition to his conscience, and without his being con-
vinced that he had been in ermr ; adding that
his answer was not sophistical, that the councils
had often come to contradictory decisions, and
that he was ready to prove it. The official briefly
answered that these contradictions could not be
proved ; but Luther persisted, and offered to
adduce his proofs. By this time it being dusk,
the assembly broke up. The S|)aniards mocked
the man of God, and loaded him with insults on
his leaving the town-hall to return to his hostelry.
" On the following day the emperor summoned
the electors and states to take into consideration
the drawing up of the imperial ban against Luther
and his adherents ; in which, however, the safe-
conduct was respected.
C
18
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 152L
" In the last conference the archbishop of Treves
asked Luther what he would himself advise in
order to bring the matter to a conclusion. Luther
replied, ' The only advice to be given is that of
Gamaliel in the Acts of the Apostles, " If this
counsel, or this work, be of men, it will come to
nought ; but if it be of God, ye cannot over-
throw it." ' Shortly after, the official of Treves
called on Luther at his hostelry with the imperial
safe-conduct for his return. It allowed him twenty
days to reach a place of safety ; but enjoined him
not to jireach, or otherwise excite the people on
his journey. He left on the next day, April 2C,
and was escorted by the herald on the emperor's
verbal orders. When he reached Friedburg,
Luther addressed a letter to the emperoi', and
another to the electors and states assembled at
Worms. . In the first, he expresses his regret
at having been necessitated to disobey the empe-
ror, adding, ' but God and God's word are above
all men.' He likewise regrets his having been
unable to obtain an examination of the evidences
which he had drawn from Scripture, and states
his readiness to present himself again before any
other assembly that may be pointed out, and to
submit himself to it in every thing without ex-
ception, provided God's woi'd sustain no attaint."
The letter to the electors and the states is to the
same effect. To Spalatin he writes (May 14),
" You cannot think how civilly the abbot of Hirs-
feld received me. He sent his chancellor and
his treasurer to meet us a long mile from his
castle, and waited for us himself some short dis-
tance from it with a troop of cavaliers to escort us
into the city. The senate received us at the gate.
The abbot treated us sumptuously in his monastery,
and would make me he in his own bed. On the
morning of the fifth day they forced me to preach.
1 pointed out to them, but without avail, that
they would lose their regales should the imperialists
treat my preaching as a breach of faith, they
having enjoined me not to preach on the road ; at
the same time, I stated that I had never consented
to tie up God's word, which wa^he truth. I also
preached at Eisenach before a terrified clergyman
and a notaiy, and witnesses who entered a protest
against my proceedings, alleging fear of their
tyi'ants as their excuse. So you may perhaps
hear it said at Worms that I have broken my
faith, but I have not. To tie up God's word is a
condition beyond my power. Indeed, they thronged
on foot from Eisenach to us, and we entered the
city in the evening : all our companions had left
in the morning with Jerome. For me, I crossed
the forest to rejoin my flesh (his parents), and had
just quitted tiiem, intending to go to Walter-
hausen, when, a few moments after, I was made
prisoner near the fort of Altenstein. Amsdorf, no
doubt, was aware that I should be seized, but he
does not know where I am kept. My brother,
having seen the horsemen timeously, leapt from
the carriage without leave-taking, and I have been
told that he reached Walterhausen on foot that
evening. As for me, they took off" my robe, and made
me dress myself as a knight, and I have allowed
my hair and beard to grow. You would have
some trouble to recognize me, for it is a long time
since I have been able to recognize myself. But
here I am now living in Christian liberty, freed
from all the tyrant's laws."
Luther was conducted to the castle of Wart-
burg, but did not clearly know to whom he was
to attribute the mild and honourable captivity
in which he was detained. Having dismissed the
herald who escorted him a few leagues from
Worms, his enemies have inferred that he was
apprised of what was about to happen. His corre-
spondence proves the contrary. A cry of grief,
however, was raised throughout Germany. He
was supposed to have perished, and pope and
emperor were accused. In reality, it was the
elector of Saxony, Luther's protector, who, taking
alarm at the sentence launched against him, and
unable either to support or abandon him, had
devised this means of saving him from his own
daring, and of gaining time while he strengthened
his party. Hiding Luther was a sure way of
raising the exaltation of Gei-many and its fears
for the champion of the faith, to the height.
BOOK THE SECOND.
A.D. 1521— 1528.
CHAPTER I.
A.D. 1521 — 1524.
Luther's residence in the castle of wartburg. —
HE returns to WITTEMBERG WITHOUT THE ELECTOR'S
authority. — HIS WRITINGS AGAINST THE KING OF
ENGLAND, AND AGAINST PRINCES IN GENERAL.
Whilst all is indignation and rage at Worms, that
the daring offender should have been allowed to
escape, the time is gone by, and he soars invisibly
over his enemies from the heights of the castle of
Wartburg. Happy and safe in his dungeon, he
can return to his flute, sing his German psalms,
translate his Bible, and thunder at the devil and
the pope quite at his ease. " The report gains
ground," writes Luther, " that I have been made
prisoner by friends sent from Franconia ;" and, at
another time, " I fancy it was supposed that Luther
had been killed, or condemned to utter silence, in
order that the public mind might relapse under
that sophistical tyranny which 1 am so hated for
having begun to undermine." However, Luther
took care to let it be known that he was still alive.
He writes to Spalatin, " I should not be sorry if
this letter were lost by some adroit neglect on your
A.D. 152J— 1524.
HIS RESIDENCE AT WARTBURG.
19
part, or on that of your friends, and should fall into
our enemies' hands. Get the Gospel I send you
copied out ; my writing must not be recognized."
" It had been my intention to dedicate to my host,
from this my Patmos, a book on the Traditions of
men, as he had asked me for infcu-mation on the
subject ; but I was restrained through fear of thus
disclosing the place of my captivity I have had
great difficulty to get this letter forwarded to you,
such is the fear of my present retreat's being found
out." (June, 1621.) "The priests and monks who
played off their pranks whilst I was at large, have
become so alarmed since I have been a prisoner,
that they begin to soften the preposterous tales
they have propagated about me. They can no
longer bear up against the pressure of the increasing
crowd, and yet see no avenue by which to escape.
See you not the arm of the Almighty of Jacob in
all that he works, whilst we are silent and rest in
patience and in prayer ! Is not the saying of
Moses lierein verified, ' Vos tacebitis, et Dominus
pugnabit pro vobis' (The Lord shall fight for you, and
ye shall hold your peace). One of those of Rome
writes to a pewit * of Mentz, Luther is lost just as
we could wish, but such is the excitement of the
people, that I fear we shall hardly be able to escape
with life, except we search for him with lighted
candles, and bring him back." Luther dates his
letters. From the region of the clouds ; From the re-
gion of the birds; or else. From amidst the birds
singing sweetly on tlt£ branches, and lauding God day
and night, with all their strength; or again, From the
mountain ; From the island of Patmos. It is from
this, his wilderness {ex eremo mea) that he pours
forth in his sad and eloquent letters the thoughts
which ci'owd upon him in his solitude. " What
art thou doing at this moment, my Philip ?" he
says to ]\Ielanchthon ; " art thou not praying for
me ? For my part, seated in contemplation the
live-long day, 1 figure to myself the image of the
Church, whilst the words of the eighty-ninth
Psalm are ever present to me, ' Ntniquid tane con-
stituisti omnes filios homimimV (Wherefore hast
thou made all men in vain ?) God ! what a hor-
rible spectre of God's wrath is this abominable
reign of the antichrist of Rome ! I hate the hardness
of my heart which does not dissolve in torrents of
tears, mourning over the sons of my murdered
people. Not one is found to rise up, take his stand
on God's side, or make himself a rampart unto the
house of Israel, in this last day of wrath ? Oh,
papal reign, worthy of the lees of ages ! God have
mercy upon us !" (May 12th.)
" When I revolve these horrible times of wrath,
ray sole desire is to find in my eyes floods of tears
to bewail the desolation of souls brought on by this
kingdom of sin and of perdition. The monster sits
at Rome, in the midst of the Church, and gives
himself out for God. Prelates flatter, soj)hists
off'er him incense, and there is nothing which the
hypocrites will not do for him. Meanwhile, hell
makes merry, and opens its immense jowl : Satan
revels in the perdition of souls. For me, I sit the
day long, drinking and doing nothing. I read the
Bible in Greek and in Hebrew. I shall write
something in German on the liberty of auricular
1 This name, applied to one of the dignitaries of the
Church, reminds one of Rabelais' marvellous birds, the
papcgots, evegots (pope-jays, bishop-ja3's), &c.
confession. I shall also continue the Psalter, and
the Commentaries {Postillas), as soon as the mate-
rials I require are sent me from Wittembcrg,
among others, the J/a</)!(^c((<, which I have begun"
(May 24th). This melancholy solitude was full of
temptations and troubles for Luther. He writes
to Melanchthon, " Your letter has displeased me on
two grounds : firstly, because I see that you bear
your cross with impatience, give too much way to
the aff'ections, and obey the tenderness of your na-
ture ; and, secondly, because you elevate me too
high, and fall into the serious error of decking me
out with various excellencies, as if I were absorbed
in God's cause. This high opinion of yours con-
founds and racks me, when I see myself insensible,
hardened, sunk in idleness ; 0 grief ! seldom in
prayer, and not venting one groan over God's
church. What do I say ? my unsubdued flesh
burns me with a devouring fire. In short, I who
was to have been eaten up with the spirit, am de-
voured by the flesh, by luxuiy, indolence, idleness,
somnolency. Is it that God has turned away from
me, because you no longer pray for me ? You
must take my place ; you, richer in God's gifts, and
more acceptable in his sight. Here is a week
slipped away since I have put pen to paper, since I
have prayed or studied, either vexed by fleshly
cares, or by other temptations. If things do not
go on better, I will to Erfurth without any at-
tempt at concealment, for I must consult physi-
cians or surgeons." At this time he was ill, and
undergoing gi'eat pain ; but he describes his
malady in too simple, rather gross terms, for
us to translate them. His spiritual sufferings,
however, were still more acute and were deeper
seated (July 13th). " When I left Worms in 1521,
was seized near Eisenach, and resided in my Pat-
mos, the castle of Wartbui'g, I was in an apart-
ment far from the world, and no one could approach
me save two noble youths, who brought me my
meals twice a day. They had bought me a bag of
nuts, which I put in a chest. In the evening, wlieu
I had gone to bed in the adjoining room and had
put out the light, I thought I heard the nuts
rattling against feach other and clicking against my
bed. I did not trouble myself about the matter;
but was awaked some time afterwards by a great
noise on the staircase, as if a hundred barrels were
being rolled from top to bottom. Yet, I knew
that the staircase was so secured by chains and an
iron door, that no one could ascend. I got up to
see what it was, and called out, ' Is it you ?'....
Well! so be it. . . And I recommended myself to
the Lord Christ, of whom it is written, Omnia
siibjecisti pedibus ejus (Thou hast put all things
mider his feet), as it is said in the eighth psalm,
and returned to my bed. — Then, John von Ber-
blibs' wife came to Eisenach, suspecting me to be
in the castle and wishing to see me; but the thing
was impossible. They put me in another part of
the castle, and the lady in the room I had oc-
cupied ; and so great was the uproar she heard in
the night, that she thought there were a thousand
devils there."
Luther found few books at Wartburg. He set
ardently about the study of Greek and Hebrew ;
and busied himself with replying to Latomus's
book, which he describes as " so prolix, and so ill-
written." He translated into German Melanch-
thon's Apology, in reply to the Paris doctors, and
c2
20
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1521 — 1524.
added a commentary to it. He displayed, indeed,
extraordinary activity, and, from his mountain
height, inundated Germany with his writings :— " I
have published a small work in reply to that
of Catharinus, on Antichrist, a treatise in German
on Confession, an explanation of the Ixvii. Psalm in
German, an explanation of the song of the blessed
Virgin Mary, in German, an explanation of the
xxxvii. Psalm in German, and a letter of comfort
to the church of Wittemberg. I have in the press
a commentary in German, on the epistles and
gospels for the year ; I have also finished a public
reprimand to die cardinal of Mentz, for the idol of
indulgences which he has just set up in Halle, and
an explanation of the miracle of the ten lepers —
all in German. I was boi*n for my Germans, and
will serve them. I had begun from the pulpit at
Wittemberg, a popular exposition of both Testa-
ments, and had reached the xxxii. chapter of
Genesis in the Old, and the coming of St. John the
Baptist in tlie New; there I was stopped" (No-
vember 1st). " I am all of a tremble, and troubled
in conscience because, yielding at Worms to your
advice and that of your friends, I allowed the
spirit to wax weak within me, instead of showing
an Elias to those idols. Let me but once again
find myself in their presence, and they shall hear a
far different tale" (September 9th). The allusion
to the archbishop of Mentz, in the letter just
quoted, deserves explanation. It is curious to note
the energy exhibited by Luther in this transaction,
and how he treats the powers, the cardinal arch-
bishop, and the elector himself, as their master.
Spalatin had written to beg him to suppress his
public reprimand to the archbishop. Luther re-
plies, " I think I never received a letter so dis-
tasteful to me as your last. Not only have I
deferred answering it, but I had even made up my
mind not to answer it. In the first place, I will
not endure your telling me, that the prince mil not
alloie of any writing against the people of Mentz, and
of the public peace being disturbed. I would annihilate
(fierdam) you all sooner, you, the archbishop, and
every living being. You say, rightly enough, that the
pubhc peace ought not to be disturbed; aud you will
allow God's eternal peace to be disturbed by such
impious and sacrilegious works of perdition ? Not
so, Spalatin , not so, prince ; for Christ's sheep's sake
will I resist with all my strength this devouring
wolf, as I have resisted others. I send you a book
against him ; it was all ready when 1 received your
letter, which has not induced me to change a
word in it. I must submit it, however, to Phihp
(Melanchthon) who is to make such alterations as
he may think proper. Beware of not forwarding it
to Philip, or of seeking to dissuade him ; the thmg
is settled, you will not be listened to " (November
nth).
Some days afterwards, he writes to the bishop
himself — " This first aud faithful exhortation ,which
I addressed to your electoral grace, having brought
npon me your jeers and ingratitude, I addressed
you a second time, offering to receive your insti-uc-
tion and advice. What was your grace's answer ?
— churlish and rude, unworthy of a bishop and of
a Christian. Now, though my two lettei-s have
been thrown away, I will not be disheartened, but,
in obedience to the gospel, will address your grace
a third warning. You have just set up again at
Halle the idol which beguiles good and simple
Christians of their money and their souls, and you
have thus publicly avowed that all which Tetzel did
was done in concert with the archbishop of Mentz.
This same God still lives, doubt it not, and
can still withstand a cardinal of Mentz, though the
latter had four emperors on his side. It is His
pleasure to break the cedars, and to lower haughty
and hardened Pharaohs. 1 beseech your grace not
to tempt this God. Did you think that Luther was
dead ? Believe it not. He is protected by that
God, who has already humbled the pope, aud is
ready to begin such a game with the archbishop of
Mentz, few have any idea of. Given
from my wilderness, the Sunday after St. Catherine's
day (November 25, 1521 ). Your well-wisher and
servant, Martin Luther."
To this, the cardinal replied humbly, and with
his own hand : — " Dear Doctor, I have received
your letter, dated the Sunday after St. Catherine's
day, and have read it with all good-will and friend-
ship. Still, its contents surprise me, as the matter
which ltd you to write has been remedied long
ago. Henceforward I will conduct myself,withGod's
aid, as it becomes a pious Christian, and ecclesias-
tical prince. I acknowledge that I stand in need
of God's grace, and that I am a poor mortal, a
sinner, and fallible, sinning and deceiving himself
daily. I know that without God's grace there is no
good in me, and that of myself I am but a worthless
dunghill. Such is my answer to your friendly
exhortation, for I entertain every desire to do you
all manner of grace and good. I cheerfully bear
with a fraternal and Chi'istian reprimand, and I
hope that the God of mercy will endow me with
his grace and strength, so that I may live accord-
ing to his will in this and all other things. Given at
Halle, St. Thomas's day (December 21st, 1521).
Albertus, manit propria."
The archbishop's chaplain and adviser, Fabricius
Capito, in an answer to Luther's letter, had found
fault with his asperity, and had said that the great
ought to be tenderly treated, excuses made for
them, and, at times, their faults even winked at. . .
Luther replies: — " You require gentleness and cir-
cumspection; I understaud you. But is there any
thing in common between the Christian and the
hypocrite? The Christian faith is a public and
sincere faith; it sees and proclaims things as they
really are .... My own opinion is, that every
thing should be unmasked, that there should be no
tenderness, no excuses, no shutting one's eyes to
any thing, so that the truth may remain pure,
visible, and open to the inspection of all. , . .
Jeremiah (ch. xl.) has these words: ' Cursed be he
that doeth the icork of the Lord deceitfully.' It is one
thing, my dear Fabricius, to laud and to extenuate
vice; another, to cure it by goodness and mildness.
Above all, it behoveth to proclaim aloud what
is just and unjust, and then, when the hearer is
deeply impressed by our teaching, to welcome him
and cheer him, despite the backslidings into which
he may still lapse. ' Him that is weak in the faith re-
ceive ye,' says St. Paul. ... I hope that I cannot
be reproached with ever having failed in charity
or patience towards the weak. ... If your cardinal
had written his letter in the sincerity of his heart,
O, my God, with what joy, what humility, would 1
not fall at his feet! How unworthy should I not
esteem myself to kiss the dust beneath them ! For
am I aught else than dust and ordure ? Let him
A.D. 1521—1524.
HIS OPINIONS ON THE MONASTIC VOW.
21
receive God's word, and 1 will be unto him as a
faithful and lowly servant. ... As regards those
who persecute and condemn that word, the highest
charity consists precisely in withstanding in every
way their sacrilegious furies. . . . Think you to
find Luther a man who will consent to shut his
eyes, if he be only cajoled a little ?. . . . Dear
Fabricius, I ought to give you a harsher answer
than the present My love inclines me to die
for you, but whoso touches my faith touches the
apple of my eye. Laugh at or prize love as you like,
but faith, — the word — you should adore and look
upon as the holy of holies: this is what we require
of you. Expect all from our love ; but fear, dread
our faith. ... I forbear replying to the cardinal
himself, since I am at a loss how to write to him
without approving or blaming his sincerity or his
hypocrisy: he must hear what Luther thinks
through you. . . . From my wilderness, St. Antony's
day" (January 17th, 1522).,
The preface which he prefixed to his explanation
of the miracle of the lepers, and which he address-
ed to several of his friends, may be quoted here: —
"Poor brother that I am! Here have 1 again
lighted a great fire; have again bitten a good hole
in the pocket of the papists; have attacked con-
fession ! What is now to be done with me ? Where
will they find sulphur, bitumen, iron, and wood
enough to reduce this pestilent heretic to ashes. It
will be necessary at the least to take the windows
out of the churches, in order that the holy priests
may find room for their preachings on the Gospel ;
id est, for their reproaches and furious vociferations
against Luther. What else will they preach to the
poor people ? Each must preach what he can and
what he knows . . . ' Kill, kill, they call out, kill this
heresiarch, who seeks to overthrow the whole eccle-
siastical polity, who seeks to fire all Christendom.'
I hope that I may be found worthy of their pro-
ceeding to this extreme, and that they will heap
upon me the measure of their fathers. But it is
not yet time; my hour is not yet come; I must first
exasperate still more this race of vipers, so as to
deserve to find death at their hands.". . . . Being
hindered fi'om plunging into the mellay, he exhorts
Melanchthon from the depths of his retirement:
" Though I should perish it would be no loss to the
Gospel, for you are now going beyond me ; you are
the Elisha who succeeds Elijah, and is invested with
double grace. Be not cast down, but sing at night
the hymn to the Lord which I have given to you,
and I will sing it likewise, having no other thought
than for tlie word. Let him who is in the dark,
be in the dark; let him who is perishing, perish;
provided they cannot complain that we have failed
in our duty " (May 26th, 1521). He was next
pressed to solve a question which he had himself
raised, and which could not be decided by theologi-
cal controversies — that relating to conventual vows.
The monks, from every quarter, desired the word
that was to release them from their solitary cells,
and Melanchthon shrunk from taking the respon-
sibility upon himself; even Luther approaches the
subject with hesitation: — " You have not yet con-
vinced me that the priestly and monastic vow are
to be regarded in the same light. I cannot but feel
that the sacerdotal order, instituted by God, is free,
but not the monastic; whose votaries have chosen
their state and voluntarily offered themselves to
God. I do not hesitate to say that such as have
not attained, or who have just arrived at mar-
riageable age, and who have entered these cut-throat
dens, need have no scruple in leaving them; but I
dare not say the same for those who are advanced
in years, or who have long embraced the state.
However, as Paul, speaking of priests, gives a very
comprehensive decision, saying that it is the devil
who has interdicted them mari-iage, and as the
voice of Paul is the voice of the Majesty of
Heaven, I nothing doubt that we ought openly to
abide by the same; and so, although when they took
the vow they bound themselves by this pi-ohibi-
tion of the devil's, yet, now that they know to what
they have bound themselves, they may confidently
unbind themselves (August 1st). For my own
part, 1 have often dissolved, without any scruple,
vows contracted before the age of twenty, and
would still dissolve such, because every one must
see that they have been contracted without deliber-
ation or knowledge. But those whose vows I so
dissolved had not yet changed their state or habit;
as to such as have already discharged in tlieir
monasteries the functions of the sacrifice, I have
as yet dared nothing. The vain beliefs of men
still overshadow and perplex me" (August 6ih,
1521). Sometimes, he feels more confident and
speaks out plainly: — " As to monastic and priestly
vows, Philip and I have conspired in right earnest
to annihilate them. . . . Every day brings me such
fresh proofs of the monstrosities arising from the
accursed celibacy of the young of both sexes, that
no words are more odious to my ears than the
names of nun, monk, priest; and marriage seems to
me a paradise even in the depths of poverty"
(November 1st).
In his preface to his work, De Votis Monasticis,
written in the form of a letter to his father ( No-
vember 21st, 1521), Luther says: . ... "I did
not tm-n monk voluntarily. Terrified by a sudden
apparition, surrounded by death, and conceiving
myself summoned by Heaven, I made an incon-
siderate and forced vow. When I told you this,
you answered, ' God send it be not a vision of the
devil's raising!' These words, as if God had
spoken by your lips, sank deeply into me; but 1
shut my heart, as much as 1 could, against you
and your words. In like manner, when I sub-
sequently objected your anger to you, you returned
me an answer which struck me as no other speech
has struck me, and which has remained graven on
my heart. You said to me, ' Have you not also
heard that you should obey your parents ? ' But
I was obdurate in my devotional intent, and
hearkened to what you said as being only of man.
Still, at the bottom of my soul I could never
despise these words." ... "I remember that when
I had taken my vows, my father by the flesh, who
was at first highly irritated, exclaimed when he
was appeased, ' Heaven grant it be not a trick of
Satan's!' a saying which has struck such deep
root in my heart, that I never heard any thing
from his mouth which I remember more tena-
ciously. Methinks G<>d spoke by his lips." (Sep-
tember 9th.) He advises Wenceslaus Link to
allow the monks to quit their convents as they
liked: — " I am certain that you will neither do nor
suffer any thing to be done contrary to the Gospel,
though the annihilation of all monasteries were to
follow. I do not like the tumultuous rush out
that I have heard of. ... . Yit I do not think
22
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1521—1524.
it good and convenient to call them back, although
they have not acted well and suitably. You must,
after the example of Cyrus, in Herodotus, allow
those to leave who wish; but neither forcibly expel
nor retain any one " He disj)layed similar
tolerance when the inhabitants of Erfurtli pro-
ceeded to acts of violence against the Catholic
priests. At Wittemberg, Carlstadt soon fulfilled and
even exceeded Luther's instructions. " Good God !"
exclaims the latter, in a letter to Spalatin, " will
our Wittemberg folk make even the monks marry!
For my part, they will not get me to take a wife.
Be on your guard against marrying, that you may
not fall into the tribulation of the flesh." (August
Cth.)
This hesitation and those precautions are clear
proofs that Luther rather followed than led the
movement, which was hurrying all minds out of
the ancient ways. " Origen," he writes to Spa-
latin, " had a separate lecture for the women; why
should not Melanchthon try something of the kind?
He can and ought, for the people are athirst and
a-hungered. I am exceedingly anxious also that
Melanchthon should preach somewhere, publicly,
in the town, on holydays, after dinner, to supplant
gaming and drinking. One would thus learn to
restore hberty, and to fashion it on the model of
the ancient Church. For if we have broken with
all human laws and shaken off the yoke, shall we
stop at Melanchthon's not being shorn and anointed,
at his being married? He is veritable priest, and
discharges the priest's office; except that office be
not the teaching of the word. Otherwise, no more
will Christ be priest, since he sometimes teaches
in the synagogues, sometimes on board ship, some-
times on the sea-shore, sometimes on the mountain:
he has filled every part, in every place, at every
hour, without ceasing to be himself. Melanchthon,
too, should read the gospel to the people in Ger-
man, as he has begun to read it in Latin, in order
that he may thus gradually qualify himself for
a German bishop, as he has become a Latin
bishop." (September 9th.) Meanwhile, the emperor
being taken up with the wars with the French
king, the elector gained confidence, and allowed
Luther a little more liberty : — " I have gone
hunting these two days, in order to see what this
yXvKVTnKpov (sweet bitter) sport of heroes is like.
We caught two hares, and some poor wretched
partridges : a fitting occupation for idle men. I
theologized, however, in the midst of the nets and
dogs : as much pleasure as the sight gave me, just
as much was it for me a mystery of pity and of
pain. What does the amusement image forth ex-
cept the devil with his impious doctors as dogs;
that is to say, the bishops and theologians who
hunt these innocent little beasts. I was deeply
sensible of the sad mystery shadowed forth in
these simple and faithful animals. Take another
more atrocious picture. We had saved a leveret
alive. I had covered it up in the sleeve of my
gown ; but leavmg it for a moment, the dogs found
the poor thing, and broke its right leg and strangled
it through the gown. It is thus that the pope and
Satan rage to ruin even the souls that are saved.
In short, I am sick of this sport. Methinks I
should prefer piercing with darts and arrows
bears, wolves, wild-boars, foxes, and the whole
tribe of wicked doctors I write thus lightly
to teach you courtiers, devourers of beasts, that
you will be beasts in your turn in Paradise, where
Christ, the great hunter, will know how to take
and encage you. 'Tis you who are the sport while
you are enjoying the sport of hunting." (August
the 15th.) All thuigs considered, Luther was not
dissatisfied with his residence at Wartburg,
where, in his liberal treatment, he recognized the
elector's hand. " The owner of this place treats
me much better than I deserve." (June 10th.)
" I do not want to be a burthen to any one. But
I am convinced that I live here at the expense of
our prince, otherwise I would not stay an hour
longer. You know that if any one's money should
be spent, it is that of princes." (August 15th.)
At the close of November, 1521, his desire to see
and exhort his disciples led him to make a short
excursion to Wittemberg; but he took care that the
elector should know nothing of it. " I conceal," he
writes to Spalatin, " both my journey and my re-
turn from him. For what reason ? You know it
well enough."
This reason was, the alarming character assumed
by the Reformation in the hands of Carlstadt, of
theological demagogues, of breakers of images.
Anabaptists, and others, who began to start up.
" I have seen the prince of those prophets, Claus-
Stork, stalking about with the air and in the attire
of those soldiers whom we call lanzkneclit; there was
another, too, in a long gown, and Doctor Gerard, of
Cologne. Stork seems to me cain-ied away by a
fickleness of mind, which will not allow him to de-
pend on his own opinions. But Satan makes him-
self sport with these men." (September 4lh, 1522.)
Still, Luther did not attach any great importance to
this movement: " I quit not my i-etreat," he writes,
" I budge not for these prophets, for they little
move me.'' (January 17th, 1522.) He charged
Melanchthon to try them; and it was on this occasion
that he addressed to him the following fine letter:
— (January 13th, 1522): "If you wish to put their
inspiration to the proof, ask them whether they
have experienced those spii'itual agonies and those
divine births, those deaths and those hells
If you hear only of sweet, and peaceful, and devout
things (as they say), albeit they should profess to be
caught up to the third heaven, sanction nothing of
the kind. The sign of the Son of Man is wanting —
the fidaavoQ (touchstone), the sole proof of Chris-
tians, the rule which distinguishes minds. Do you
wish to know the place, the manner, and the time of
divine colloquies ? Listen : ' As a lion, so w'dl he
break all my bones,' &c. ' Why easiest thou off my
soul ? why hidest thou thy face from me ? ' &c. ' The
sorrows of death comjxissed me, and the pains of hell
gat hold upon me.' The Majesty of Heaven does not
speak, as they pretend, immediately, and in sight of
man: nay, 'No man shall see me and live.' There-
fore, He speaketh by the mouth of men ; because we
cannot all receive His word. The Virgin even was
troubled at the sight of an angel. Hearken, also, to
the cry of Daniel and of Jeremiah : ' Coi-rect me, but
with judgment, not in thine anger.' " On January
l^th he writes: ' Take care that our prince does
not stain his hands with the blood of these new
prophets. You must fight with the word alone,
conquer with the word alone, destroy with the word
what they have raised by force and violence
I condemn solely by the word: let him who believeth
believe and follow; let the unbeliever continue in
his unbelief and go his way. No one must be forced
A.D. 1521—1524.
ins RETURN TO WITTEMBERG.
23
unto the faith or the things of the faith, but be pre-
vailed upon by the word. I condemn images, but
by the word; not that they may be burnt, but that
no trust may be put in them."
But things were taking place in Wittemberg
which would not suffer Luther to remain longer in
his dungeon. He set off witliout asking the elector's
leave. A curious account of his journey is given by
one of the historians of the Reformation: —
" John Kessler, a young theologian of Saint-Gall,
on his way with a friend to Wittemberg to finish
his studies there, fell in one evening in an inn near
the gates of Jena with Luther, who wore a riding
dress. They did not know him. The horseman
had a little book before him, which, as they saw
afterwards, was the Psalter in Hebrew. He saluted
them politely, and invited them to seat themselves
at his table. In the course of conversation, he in-
quired what was thought of Luther in Switzerland ?
Kessler replied, that some did not know how to laud
him enough, and thanked God for having sent him
on earth to exalt the truth; whilst others, and espe-
cially the priests, denounced him as a heretic who
was not to be spared. From something which the
innkeeper said to the young travellers, they took him
to be Ulrich von Hutten. Two traders came in. One
of them drew from his pocket, and put on the table
by him, a newly-printed work of Luther's, in sheets,
and asked if they had seen it. Luther said a few
words about the indifference towards serious matters
manifested by the princes at that time assembled at
the diet of Nuremberg. He also expressed his
hopes ' that the Gospel truth would bear more fruit
in succeeding generations, which should not have
been poisoned by the Papal error.' One of the
traders said, ' I am unskilled in these questions;
but, to my mind, Luther must either be an angel
from heaven or a devil from hell; at all events, I
will spend the last ten florins that I have saved up
in going to confess to him.' This conversation took
place during supper. Luther had settled before-
hand with the hosteller to pay the reckoning of the
whole company. When the party broke up, Luther
shook hands with the two Swiss (tlie traders had
been called away by their business), and begged
them to bear his remembrances to Doctor Jerome
Schurff, their countryman, as soon as they reached
Wittemberg. And when they enquired whose re-
membrances it was they were to bear, he replied:
' Simply tell him that he who is to come salutes
him; he will be sure to understand from whom the
message comes.' When the traders returned, and
learnt that it was Luther with whom they had been
talking, they were in despair that they had not
known it sooner, that they had not shown him more
respect, and had spoken so sillily before him. The
following morning they were up betimes, on purpose
to see him before he left, and to tender him their
most humble excuses. Luther only owned to its
being himself by implication."
On his road to Wittemberg he wrote to the
elector, who had forbade him to leave Wartburg:
" . . . . I do not hold the Gospel of men, but of
Heaven, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and 1 might well
have called myself his servant, and assumed the
name of evangelist, as I intend doing henceforward.
If I have sought to be examined, it is not that I
doubted the goodness of my cause, but through de-
ference and humility alone. Now, seeing that this
excess of humility only depreciates the Gospel, and
that the devil, if I yield an inch of ground, seeks to
take possession of the whole, my conscience com-
pels me to act differently. It is enough that, to
pleasure your electoi'al grace, I have spent a year
in retirement. Well does the devil know that this
was through no fears of mine. He saw my heart
when I entered Worms. Had that town been filled
with devils I would joyfully have flung myself into
it. Now, duke George cannot even pass for a devil ;
and I leave it to your electoral grace whether it
would not be offensive to the Father of all mercy,
who bids us put our trust in Him, to fear the anger
of this duke ? Did God summon me to Leipsic, his
capital, as He summons me to Wittemberg, I
would thither (forgive the silly expression) though
it should rain Duke Georges nine days on end, and
each nine times more furious than he. . . . He
takes Jesus Christ, then, for a man of straw. The
Lord may bear with this for a time, but not always.
No more will I conceal from your electoral gx-ace
that I have more than once besought God with tears
to be pleased to enlighten the duke; and I will do
so once more with all zeal, but it shall be for the
last time. I also beg your grace's own prayers,
and that you would order prayers to be put up, to
the end that we may turn away from him, if God so
please, that fearful judgment which, alas ! threatens
him each day more nearly. I write this to apprize
you that I am on my way to Wittemberg, under
higher protection than that of the elector; so that I
have no intention of asking your grace's support.
Nay, I even believe that I shall be a better protec-
tion to the elector than the elector to me; and did
I think that I had to trust to him I should stay my
steps. The sword is powerless here. God must
act, without man's interference. He, in whom faith
most abounds, will be the most efficacious protector;
and, as I feel your grace's faith to be still weak, I
can by no means recognize in yoyi him who is to
protect and save me. Your electoral grace asksnie
what you are to do under these circumstances,
thinking you have done little hitherto ? I answer,
with all submission, that your grace has done only
too much, and that you should do nothing. God
desireth not all this uneasiness and turmoil about
His cause; but that we should ti-ust in Him alone.
If your grace entertain this faith you will rcaj)
peace and security; if not, I at least will rest in
faith, and shall be obliged to leave to your grace the
torment with which God punishes unbelievers.
Since, then, I decline complying with your grace's
exhortations, you will be justified befoi-e God if I
am taken or am put to death. And, before men,
it is my wish your grace should act as follows: —
That you be obedient to authority like a good
elector, allow the emperor to rule in his states con-
formably with the laws of the empire, and forbear
from resisting any power which shall attack my
liberty or my life; for no one ought to disarm au-
thority or resist it, save Him who has instituted it;
else 'tis revolt, and against God. I only hope that
they will have sense enough to discern that your
electoral grace is too high in place to turn my
gaoler; so that, if you leave the doors open and in-
sist on the recognition of the safe-conduct, should
they come to seize me, you will have satisfied the
calls of obedience. On the contrary, if they arc
unreasonable enough to order your grace yourself
to lay hands on me, I will so manage that you shall
suffer on my account no prejudice in body, goods,
24
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1521—1524.
L
or soul. I will explain myself, if necessary, more
at length another time. I forward this, for fear of
your grace's being distressed at hearing of my ar-
rival; for, as a Christian, I ought to comfort every
one and harm none. If your grace had faith, you
would behold the wondrous doings of God; but if
you yet have it not, you have yet seen nothing. Let
us love and glorify God for ever. Amen. Written
at Borna, with my guide by me. Ash Wednesday,
(March 5th,) 1522. Your electoral grace's most
humble servant, Martin Luther."
(March 7th.) The elector had requested Luther
to explain to liim his reasons for returning to Wit-
temberg, in a letter which might be shown to the
emperor. Luther, in his letter, gives three reasons:
— The urgent entreaties of the Church of Witteni-
berg; the confusion that h.ad arisen in his flock;
and, thirdly, the desire to hinder, as far as in him
lies, the outljreaks which he considers to be immi-
nent.
"... My second reason for returning," he
writes, " is, that during my absence Satan has
entered my sheepfold, and has committed ravages
which I can only repair by my own presence and
lively word ; writing would have been useless.
My conscience would not allow me to delay longer;
I was bound to disregard not only your highness's
favour or disfavour, but the whole world's wrath.
It was my flock, the flock entrusted to me by
God, my children in Christ Jesus ; I could not
hesitate a moment. I am bound to suff'er death
for them, and would cheerfully lay down my life,
with God's grace, even as it is asked by Jesus
Christ (St. John x. 11). Could my pen have
remedied the mischief, wherefore should I have
come ? Wliy not, if my presence were unneces-
sary, have made up my mind to quit Wittemberg
for ever ?" . . In the same month, soon after his
retui'n to Wittemberg, Luther writes to his friend
Hartmuth von Ivronberg. "... Satan, icho is ever
bust/ amongst the children of God, as Job says
(i. 6, 7), has just done us all, and me in particular,
a grievous mischief. Not all my enemies, however
near they have often been to me, have ever struck
me such a blow as I have sustained at the hands
of my friends. I am forced to own that the
smoke from this fire offends alike my eyes and
heart. ' 'Tis by attacking him on this side,' Satan
has said to himself, ' that I can prostrate Luther's
courage, and overcome his stubborn mind. This
time he will not escape me.' . . . Pej-haps God
designs to punish me by this stroke for having
repressed the spirit within me at Worms, and
spoken too gently to the tjTants. The pagans,
it is true, have since then accused me of having
shown pride. They know not what faith is. I
yielded to the entreaties of my good friends, who
would not liave me appear too unpolished ; but
I have often repented of this deference and
humility. . . I myself no longer know Luther, and
wish not to know him. What I preach comes not
from him, but from Jesus Christ. Let the devil
fly away with Luther if he can, I care not, so
long as he leaves Jesus Christ reigning in all
hearts."
About the middle of this year, Luther broke out
with the greatest violence against princes. A
great number of princes and bishops (amongst the
rest, duke George), had just prohibited the trans-
Jation which he was then publishing of the Bible; and
the price was returned to such as had purchased it.
Luther boldly took up the gauntlet so thrown down:
— " We have reaped the first fruits of victory, and
have triumphed over the papal tyranny, which had
weighed down kings and princes; how much easier
will it not be to bring the princes themselves to
their senses ! . . . I greatly fear troubles arising,
if they continue to hearken to that silly-pated duke
George, which will bring ruin on princes and
magistrates, over all Germany; and, at the same
time, involve the clergy in a similar fate. Such
is my view of the aspect of affairs. The people are
agitated in all directions, and on the look-out. They
will, they can no longer suffer themselves to be
oppressed. This is the Lord's doing. He shuts
the eyes of the princes to these menacing symptoms,
and will bring the whole to a consummation, by
their blindness and their violence. Methinks I see
Germany swimming in blood! I tell them that the
sword of civil war is hanging suspended over their
heads. They are doing their utmost to rum Luther,
and Luther dues his utmost to save them. De-
struction is yawning, not for Luther, but for them ;
and they draw nigh of themselves, instead of
shrinking back. I believe the Spirit now speaks in
me; and that if the decree of wrath goes forth in
heaven, and neither prayer nor wisdom can avail,
we shall obtain that our .Josiah sleep in peace, and
the world be left to itself in its Babylon. — Although
hourly exposed to death, in the midst of my
enemies, and without any human aid, I have yet
never so despised anything in my life as these
stupid threats of prince George's and his fellows.
The Spirit, doubt it not, will master duke George
and his comrades in folly. I have written all this
to you fasting, and at a very early liour, with my
heart filled with pious confidence. My Christ lives
and reigns; and I shall live and reign" ( March 19tli).
About the same time, Henry VIII. published the
work which he had got his chaplain Edward Lee to
write, and in which he announced himself the
champion of the church.
" This work betrays royal ignorance, hut a viru-
lence and mendacity as well, which are wholly
Lee's " (July 22nd). Luther's reply came out the
following year, and exceeded in violence even all
that might have been expected from his writings
against the pope. Never had any private man,
before him, addressed a monarch in such contemp-
tuous and audacious terms: —
" To the words of fathers, men, angels, devils, I
oppose, not ancient usage, or a multitude of men, but
the word alone of the Eternal Majesty — the Gos-
pel which they themselves are forced to recognize.
On this, I take my stand ; this is my glory, my
triumph ; and from this, I mock popes, Thomists,
Henricists, sophists, and all the gates of hell. I
care little about the words of men, whatever their
sanctity, and as little for tradition and deceitful
usage. God's word is above all. If I have the
Divine Majesty with me, what signifies all the rest,
even if a thousand Austin friars, a thousand Cy-
prians, a thousand of Henry's churches, were to
rise up against me ? God cannot eri", or be de-
ceived ; Augustin and Cyprian, as well as all the
elect, can err, and have erred. The mass conquered,
we have, I opine, conquered the popedom. The
mass was as it were the rock on which the popedom,
with its monasteries, episcopacies, colleges, altars,
ministers, and doctrines, on which, in fine, its whole
A.D. 1521—1524.
HIS TREATISE ON THE SECULAR POWER.
25
pauuch was founded. All this will topple down
along with the abomination of their sacrilegious
mass. In Christ's cause I have trodden under foot
the idol of the Roman abomination, which had
seated itself in God's place, and had become mis-
tress of kings, and of the world. Who then is this
Henry, this new Thomist, this disciple of the mon-
ster, that I should respect his blasphemies and his
violence ? He is the defender of the Church ; yes,
of his own church, which he exalts so high, of the
whore who lives in purple, drunken with debauch,
of that mother of fornications. My leader is Christ ;
and with one and the same blow, I will dash in
pieces this Church, and its defenders, who are but
one. My doctrines, I feel convinced, are of heaven.
I have triumphed with them over him who has
more strength and craft in his little finger than all
popes, kings, and doctors, put together. My doc-
trines will remain, and the pope will fall, notwith-
standing all the gates of hell, and all the powers of
the air, the earth, and the sea. They have defied
me to war ; well, they shall have war. They have
despised the peace I offered them ; peace shall no
more be theirs. God will see which of the two will
first have enough of it, the pope or Luther. Thrice
have I appeared before them. I entered Worms,
well aware that Caesar was to violate the public faith
in my person. Luther, the fugitive, the trembling,
came to cast himself within the teeth of Behe-
moth. . . . But they, these terrible giants, has one
single one of them presented himself for these
three years at Wittemberg ? And yet they might
have come in all safety, under the Emperor's gua-
rantee. The cowards ! Do they dare yet to
hope for triumph ? They thought that my flight
would enable them to retrieve their shameful ig-
nominy. It is now known by all the world ; it is
known that they have not had the courage to face
Luther alone" (a. d. 1523).
He was still more violent in the treatise which
he published in German on the Secular Power :
" Princes are of the world, and the world is alien
from God ; so that they live according to the
world, and against God's law. Be not surprised
then by their furious raging against the Gospel,
for they cannot but follow the laws of their own
nature. You must know, that from the beginning
of the world, a wise prince has been rare ; still
more, an honest and upright prince. They are
generally great fools, or wicked castaways {maxime
fatui, pessimi nebulones super terrain). And so the
worst is always to be expected from them, and
scarcely ever good ; especially when the salvation
of souls is concerned. They serve God as lictors
and executioners, when he desires to chastise the
wicked. Our God is a powerful King, and must
have noble, illustrious, rich executioners and lic-
tors, such as they, and wills them to have riches
and honours in abundance, and to be feai'ed of all.
It is his divine pleasure that we style his exe-
cutioners merciful lords, that we prostrate our-
selves at their feet, that we be their most humble
subjects. But these very executioners do not
push the trick so far, as to desire to become good
pastors. If a prince be wise, upright, a Christian,
it is a great miracle, a precious sign of divine
favour ; for, commonly, it happens as with the
Jews, to whom God said, ' I will give thee a king
in my anger, and take him away in my wrath'
{Dabo tibi regem in furore meo, et auferam in in-
dignation med). Aud look at our Chrisuan
princes who protect the faith, and devour the
Turk. . . . Good people, trust not to them. In
their great wisdom, they are about to do some-
thing ; they are about to break their necks, and
precipitate nations into disasters and misery. . . .
Now 1 will make the blind to see, in order that
they may understand those four words in Psalm
c\ii. Effundit contemptum super primipes (He
poureth contempt on princes). I swear to you
by God himself, that if you wait for men to
come and shout in your ears these four words,
you are lost, even though each of you were
as powerful as the Turk ; and then it will avail
you nothing to swell yourselves out and grind
your teeth. . . Already there are very few princes
who are not treated as fools and knaves; for the
plain reason that they show themselves such, and
the people begin to use their understanding
Good masters and lords, govern with moderation
and justice, for your people will not long endure
your tyranny ; they neither can, nor will. This
world is no more the world of former davs, in
which you went hunting down men like wild
beasts." Luther remarks with regard to two
severe rescripts of the emperor's against him :
" I exhort every good Christian to pray with me
for these blmd princes, whom God has no doubt
sent us in his wrath, and not to follow them against
the Turks. The Turk is ten times more able and
more religious than our princes. How can these
wretches, who tempt and blaspheme God so hor-
ribly, succeed against him ? Does not that
poor and wretched creature, who is not for one
moment sure of his life, does not our emperor
impudently boast that he is the true and sovereign
defender of the Christian faith ? Holy Scripture
says that the Christian faith is a rock, against
which the devil, and death, and every power shall
be broken ; that it is a divine power, and that
this divine power can be protected from death by
a child, whom the slightest touch would throw
down. 0 God ! how mad is this world ! Here is
the king of England, who, in his turn, styles him-
self, Defender of the Faith ! Even the Hungarians
boast of being the protectors of God, and sing in
their litanies, ' Ut nos defetisores tuos exaudire
digneris' (Vouchsafe to hear us, thy defenders). . .
Why are not there princes to protect Jesus Christ
as well, and others to defend the Holy Ghost ? On
this fashion, the Holy Trinity and the faith would,
I conclude, at last be fitly guarded I" . . . (a.d.
1523.)
Daring like this alarmed the elector. Luther
could hardly reassure him : — " I call to mind, my
dear Spalatin, what I wrote from Bora to the
elector, and would to God that, warned by such
evident signs from God's own hand, you would but
have faith. Have I not escaped these two years
from every attempt ? Is not the elector not only
safe, but has he not for this year past seen the rage
of the princes abated ? It is not hard for Christ to
protect Christ in this cause of mine ; which the
elector espoused, induced by God alone. Could I
devise any means of separating him from this cause,
without casting shame on the Gospel, I should not
grudge even my life. Nay, I had made sure that
before a year was over, they would drag me to the
stake ; and in this was my hope of his deliverance.
Since, however, we cannot comprehend or divine
26
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1521—1524.
God's designs, we shall ever be perfectly safe if we
say — 'Thy will he done /' And I have no doubt but
that the prince will be secure from all attack, so
long as he does not publicly espouse and approve
our cause. Why is he forced to partake our dis-
grace ? God only knows ; although it is quite
certain that this is not to his hurt or danger, but,
on the contrary, to the great benefit of his salva-
tion " (October 12th, 1523).
What constituted Luther's safety, was the
apparent imminency of a general revolutionary
movement. The lower classes grumbled. The
petty nobility, more impatient, took the initiative.
The rich ecclesiastical principalities lay exposed as
a prey; and it seemed as if their pillage would be
the signal for civil war. The catholics themselves
protested by legal means, against the abuses which
Luther had pointed out in the church. In March,
1523, the diet of Nuremberg suspended the execu-
tion of the imperial edict against Luther, and drew
up against the clergy the Centum Gravamina (The
Hundred Grievances). Already the most zealous
of the princes of the Rhine, Franz von Sickingen,
had begun the contest between the petty barons and
princes, by attacking the Palatine. "Matters,"
exclaimed Luther, " are come to a grievous pass.
Certain signs indicate approaching revolution; and
I am convinced Germany is threatened either with
a most cniel war or its last day " (January 16th,
1523).
CHAPTER IL
BEGINNINGS OF THE LUTHERAN CHtTRCH. — ATTEMPTS AT
ORGANISATION, &C.
The most active and laborious period of Luther's
life, was that succeeding his return to Wittemberg.
He was constrained to go on with the Reformation,
to advance each day on the road he had opened, to
surmount new obstacles, and yet, from time to time,
to stop in this work of destruction to reconstruct
and rebuild as well as he might. His life loses the
unity it presented at Worms, and in the castle of
Wartburg. Hurried from his poetic solitude into
a vortex of the meanest realities, and cast as a prey
to the world, 'tis to him that all the enemies of Rome
will apply. All flock to him, and besiege his door
— princes, doctors, or burgesses. He has to reply
to Bohemians, to Italians, to Swiss, to all Europe.
Fugitives arrive from every quarter. Indisputably,
the most embarrassing of these are the nuns who,
having fled from their convents, and having been
rejected by their families, apply for an asylum to
Luther. This man, tliirty-six years of age, finds him-
self obliged to receive these women and maidens,
and be to them a father. A poor monk, his own
situation a necessitous one (see, above, c. iv), he
labours to get some small help for them from the
parsimonious elector, who is allowing himself to
die of hunger. To sink into these straits, after his
triumph at Worms, was enough to calm the re-
former's exaltation.
The answers he returns to the multitude that
come to consult him, are impressed with a liberality
of spirit which, afterwards, we shall see him occa-
sionally lose sight of ; when, raised to be the head
of an established church, he shall himself ex-
perience the necessity of staying the movement
which he had impressed onx'cligious thought.
First comes the pastor of Zwickau, Hausmann,
calling on Luther to determine the limits of evan-
gelical liberty. He answers : — " We grant full
libei'ty with regard to the communion in both
kinds ; but to such as approach becomingly and
with fear. In all the rest, let us observe the usual
ritual, let each follow his own lights, and each in-
ten-ogate his own conscience, how to answer to
the Gospel." The Moravian brethren come next,
the Vaudois of Moravia, (March 26th, 1522). " The
sacrament itself," writes Luther to them, " is not so
indispensable as to render faith and charity super-
fluous. It is madness to be meddling with these poor
matters, to the neglect of the precious concerns of
salvation. Where faith and charity are, there can
be no sin either in adoring or not adoring. On the
contrary, where faith and charity are not, there can-
not but be one enduring sin. If these wranglers
will not say concomitance, let them say otherwise,
and give over disputing, since they agree fundamen-
tally. Faith, charity does not adore (it is the
woi'ship of samts that is alluded to), because it
knows that adoration is not commanded, and that
there is no sin in not adoring. So does it pass at
liberty through the midst of these people, and re-
conciles them all, by leaving each to enjoy his own
opinion. It forbids wrangling with and condemning
one another, for it hates sects and schisms. I
would resolve the question of the adoration of God
in the saints, by saying, that it is altogether in-
diff"erent, and open to individual choice or rejec-
tion." He expressed himself in regard to this
latter subject with singular haughtiness : "To my
own marvel, my opinion of the worship of saints is
so called for by the whole world, that I feel forced
to publish it. I had rather the question were
suff"ered to rest, for the one reason that it is unne-
cessary " (May 29th, 1522). " As to the exhibition
of relics, I think they have already been exhibited
over and over again, throughout the whole world.
With respect to purgatory ; it seems to me a very
doubtful matter. It is probable that, with the
exception of a small number, all the dead sleep in a
state of insensibility. I do not suppose purgatory
to be a determinate spot, as imagined by the so-
phists. To believe them, all those who are neither
in heaven nor in hell, are in purgatory. Who
dare affirm this ? The souls of the dead may
sleep between heaven, earth, hell, purgatory, and all
things, as it happens with the living, in profound
sleep. ... I take this to be the pain which is
called the foretaste of hell ; and from which Christ,
Moses, Abraham, David, Jacob, Job, Hezekiah,
and many others, suffered such agony. And as
this is like hell, and yet temporax-y, whether it take
place in the body or out of the body, it is purgatory
tome." (January 13th, 1522.)
In Luther's hands, confession loses the character
it had assumed under the Chui'ch. It is no longer
that formidable tribunal which shuts and opens
heaven. With him, the priest simply places his
wisdom and his experience at the penitent's ser-
vice; and from the sacrament which it was, con-
fession is transformed into a ministry of comfort
and good advice. " It needeth not, in confession,
to recapitulate all one's sins ; each can tell what he
likes; we shall stone no one for this; if they confess
from the bottom of their heart that they are poor
sinners, we are satisfied. If a murderer said on
his trial that I had given him absolution, I should
A.D. 1521—1524.
ORGANIZATION OF THE NEW CHURCH.
27
say — I know not whether he is absolved, for it is
not I who confess and absolve, it is Christ. A
woman at Venice killed, and flung into the water,
a young gallant who had slept with her. A monk
gave her absolution, and then informed against
her. The woman produced in her defence the
monk's absolution. The senate decided that the
monk should be bunit and the woman banished the
city. It was a truly wise sentence. But if I gave
a notification signed with my own hand to an
alarmed conscience, and it were handed to the
judge, I might lawfully insist on his giving it up to
me, as I did with duke George; for he who holds
another's letters, without a good title to them, is a
thief." As to mass, from the year 1519, he treats
its external celebration as a matter of perfect indif-
ference ; writing to Spalatin," You ask me for a model
form of ceremonial for mass. I implore you not to
trouble yourself about minutite of the kind. Pray
for those whom God shall inspire you to pray for,
and keep your conscience free on this subject. It
is not so important a matter as to require us
to shackle still further by decrees and traditions
the spirit of liberty: the prevailing traditions that
ovei'burthen the mass are enough, and more than
enough." Towards the end of his life, in 1542, he
again wrote to the same Spalatin (November 10th):
— " With regard to the elevation of the host, do
just as it pleases you. 1 wish no fetters forged on
indifferent matters. This is the strain in which I
write, have wi-itten, and ever shall write to all who
worry me on this question." Nevertheless, he
recognized the necessity of external worship: —
" Albeit ceremonies are not necessary to salvation,
nevertheless they make an impression on rude
minds. I allude mainly to the ceremonies of the
mass, which you may retain as we have here at
Wittemberg." (January 11th, 153J.) " I condemn
no ceremony, except such as are contrary to the
Gospel. We have retained the baptistery and
baptism; although we administer it in the vulgar
tongue. I allow of images in the temple; mass is
celebrated with the usual rites and habits, with the
exception of some hymns in the vulgar tongue, and
of pronouncing the words of consecration in Ger-
man. In short, I should not have substituted the
vulgar tongue for Latin in the celebration of mass,
had I not been compelled to it." (March 14th, 1528.)
" Yon are about to organise the church of Koenigs-
berg; I pray you, in Christ's name, change as few
things as possible. You have some episcopal
towns near you, and must not let the ceremonies of
the new Church differ much from the ancient
rites. If mass in Latin be not done away with,
retain it; only, introduce some hymns in German.
If it be done away with, retain the ancient ceremo-
nial and habits." (July IGth, 1528.)
The most serious change which Luther intro-
duced into the mass, was translating it into the vul-
gar tongue. " Mass shall be said in German for
the laity ; but the daily service shall be performed
in Latin, introducing, however, some German
hymns." (October 28th, 1525.) " I am glad to find
that mass is now celebrated in Germany, in Ger-
man. But that Carlstadt should make this impe-
rative, is going too far. He is incorrigible. Al-
ways laws, always obligations, sins of omission, or
commission ! But he cannot help it. I should be
delighted to sing mass in German, and am busied
with it ; but I want it to have a true German air.
Simply to translate the Latin text, preserving the
usual tone and chant, may pass ; but it does not
sound well, or satisfy me. The whole, text and
notes, accent and gestures, ought to spring from
our native tongue and voice ; otherwise, it can
only be imitation and mockery " "1 wish
rather than promise, to furnish you with a mass in
German ; since I do not feel myself equal to this
labour, which requires both music and brain-work.
(November 12th, 1524.) " I send you the mass ; I
will even consent to its being sung ; but I do not
like to have Latin music with German words. I
should wish the German chant to be adopted."
(March 26th, 1525.) " I am of opinion that it would
be advantageous, after the example of the prophets,
and the ancient Fathers of the Church, to compose
psalms in German for the people. We are looking
for poets everywhere ; but sith you have been
gifted with considerable fluency and eloquence in
the German tongue, and have cultivated these
gifts, I pray you to assist me in my labour, and
to essay a translation of some psalm, on the mo-
del of those I have composed. I am anxious to
avoid all new words and court phrases. To be un-
derstood by the people, you require to use the
simplest and commonest language, attending, how-
ever, to purity and precision ; and your phrases
must be as clear and as close to the text as pos-
sible." (a.d. 1524.)
It was no easy task to organize the new Church.
The ancient hierarchy was broken up. The prin-
ciple of the Reformation was to reinstate every-
thing according to Scripture warrant ; and to be
consistent, the Church should have been restored to
the democratic form it assumed during the first
centuries. Luther, at first, seemed to incline to
this. In his De Miiiistris Ecclesice Iristituendis, (On
the Appointment of Ministers to the Church,) ad-
dressed to the Bohemians, he writes — " What a
notable invention it is of the papists, that the priest
is invested with an indestructible character, which
no fault he commits can deprive him of. . . .
The priest ought to be chosen, elected by the
suff"rages of the people, and then confirmed by
the bishop ; that is to say, after election, the
senior, the most venerable of the electors, shoidd
ratify it by imposition of hands. Did Christ,
the first priest under the New Testament, require
the tonsure and other fooleries of episcopal ordina-
tion ? Did his apostles, his disciples ? . . . . AH
Christians are priests, all may teach God's word,
administer baptism, consecrate the bread and wine ;
for Christ has said, ' Do this in remembrance of
me.' All of us Christians have the power of the
keys. Christ said to his apostles, who represented
the whole human race before him, ' I say unto you,
that what you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed
in heaven.' But to bind and to unloose is no
other thing than to preach and to apply the
Gospel. To loose, is to announce that God has
forgiven the sinner his errors. To bind, is to de-
prive of the Gospel and annoimce that his sins are
remembered. The names which priests ought to
bear, are those of ministers, deacons, bishops (over-
seers), dispensers. On a minister's ceasing to be
faithful, he ought to be deposed ; his brethren may
excommunicate him, and put some other minister
in his place. Preaching is the highest oftice in
the Church. Jesus Christ and Paul preached, but
did not baptize." (a. d. 1523.) He would not, as
28
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1521—1624.
we have already seen, restrict all churches to one
iinifoiin rule. " 1 do not opine that our Wittem-
berg rules should be imposed on all Germany."
And again, " It does not seem to me safe to call a
council of ourselves, in order to establish uni-
formity of ceremonies, a mode of proceeding
fraught with evil consequences, as is proved by all
the councils of the Church from the beginning.
Thus, in the council of the Apostles, works and
traditions received more attention than faith ; and,
in the succeeding councils, the faith was never
brought under consideration, but always opinions
and minute questions, so that the name of council
has become as suspicious and distasteful to me as
that of free-will. If one church does not wish to
imitate another in these external matters, what
need of hampering ourselves with decrees of coun-
cils, which soon become laws and nets for souls ?"
(November 12th, 1524.)
He, nevertheless, felt that this liberty might be
extended too far, and lead the Reformation into in-
numerable abuses. " I have read your plan of
ordination, my dear Hausmann, but think it would
be better not to publish it. I have long since been
repenting of what I have done ; for since all, in
imitation of me, have proposed their reforms, so
infinite has been the increase in the variety and
number of ceremonies, that we shall soon exceed
the ocean of the papal ceremonial." (March 21st,
1534.) With the view of introducing some unity
into the ceremonies of the new church, annual
visitations were instituted, and held over all Saxony.
The visitors were to inquire into the lives and
doctrines of the pastors, revive the faith of the
ei-i'ing, and exclude from the priesthood all whose
manners were not exemplary. These visitors
were nominated by the elector, on the recom-
mendation of Luther ; who, as he had fixed
his residence at Wittemberg, formed along with
Jonas, Melanchthon, and some other theologians, a
sort of central committee for the direction of all
ecclesiastical aflFairs. " The inhabitants of Wins-
heim have petitioned our illustrious prince, to
allow you to take charge of their church ; on our
advice, he has refused their prayers. He allows
you to return to your own country, should we judge
you worthy of the ministry there (November,
1531). Signed Luther, Jonas, Melanchthon."
Numerous similar notices occur amongst Luther's
letters, signed by himself and many other protestant
theologians.
Although Luther enjoyed no rank which placed
him above the other pastors, he yet exercised a
kind of supremacy and control. " Still," he
writes to Amsdorf, " still fresh complaints against
you and Frezhans, because you have excommuni-
cated a barber. As yet, I would fain not decide
betwixt you ; but, tell me, I pray you, why this
excommunication ?" (July, 1532). " "We can only
I'efuse the communion. To endeavour to give to
religious excommunication all the effects of political
excommunication, would be to get ourselves laughed
at by trying to assert a power incompatible with the
present age, and which is above our strength . . .
The province of the civil magistrate should not be
interfered with. . ." (June 26th, 1533.) However,
at times, excommunication seemed to him a good
weapon to employ. A burgess of Wittemberg had
purchased a house for thirty florins, and, after some
repair-s, asked four hundred for it. "If he per-
sist,'' says Luther, " 1 excommunicate him. We
must revive excommunication." As he spoke of
reviving the consistorial courts. Christian Bruck,
the jurisconsult, said to him: "The nobles and
citizens fear you are about to begin with the
peasants in order to end with them." " Jurist,"
replied Luther, " keep to your law and to what
concerns the public peace." In 1538, learning that
a man of Wittemberg despised God, his word, and
his servants, he has him threatened by two chap-
lains. At a later period he excludes a nobleman,
who was a usurer, from the communion table. One
of the things which most troubled the reformer
was the abolition of the monastic vows. About
the middle of the year 1522, he published an ex-
hortation to the four mendicant orders. In the
month of March the Austin friars, in August the
Carthusians, declared openly for him: — " To the
lieutenants of his imperial majesty at Nuremberg.
. . . . God cannot ask for vows beyond human
strength to fulfil. . . . Dear lords, suffer yourselves
to be entreated. You know not the horrible and
infamous tricks the devil plays in convents. Become
not his accomplices; burden not your conscience
therewith. Ah ! did my most infuriate enemies
know the things I hear daily from all countries,
they would help me to-morrow to do away with
convents. You force me to cry out louder than I
like. Give way, I beseech you, before these scan-
dals become too disgracefully notorious." (August,
1523.) " I am much pleased with the general de-
cree of the Carthusians, allowing the monks liberty
to leave and to renounce their habit, and shall pub-
lish it. The example set by so considerable an
order will further our wishes and support our deci-
sions." (August 20th, 1522.) However, he wished
things to be done without noise or scandal. He
writes to John Lange: — " You have not, I conclude,
left your monastery without a reason; but I should
have preferred your making your reasons public;
not that I condemn your leaving, but that I would
have our adversaries deprived of all occasion of
calumny."
Vain were his exhortations to avoid all violence.
The Reformation slipped away from his hands, and
extended itself every day externally. At Erfurth,
in the year 1521, the people had forced the houses
of several priests, and he had complained of it; the
following year they went further in the Low Coun-
tries. " You know, I believe, what has taken place
at Antwerp, and how the women have forcibly set
Henry of Zutphen at liberty. The brethren have
been expelled from the convent; some are pri-
soners in divers places: others have been let go
after denying Christ; others, again, have held out;
such as are by birth citizens of the town have been
cast into the house of the Beghards; all the furni-
ture of the convent has been sold, and the church,
as well as the convent, shut, and they are about to
pull it down. The holy sacrament was transferred
with pomp to the church of the Holy Virgin, as if it
had been rescued from an heretical spot. Burgesses
and women have been put to the torture and
punished. Henry himself is returning by way of
Bremen, where he is stopping to preach the word,
at the prayers of the people, and by order of the
council, in despite of the bishop. The peoi)le are
animated by marvellous desire and ardour; in fine,
a chapman has been set up in business here by
some individuals, in order to import books from
A,D. 1521—1524.
SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES.
29
Wittemberg. Henry, iudeed, required letters of
licence from you; but we could not get at you
quickly enough, so we have granted them in your
name, under the seal of our prior." (December 19th,
1522.) All the Austin friars of Wittemberg had
left their monastery one after the other; the prior
resigned its temporalities into the elector's hands,
and Luther threw off the gown. On the 9th of
October, 1524, he appeared in public with a robe
like the one worn at the present day by preachers
in Germany; and it was the elector's present.
Luther's e.xample encouraged monks and nuns to
I'e-enter the world; and these helpless females, sud-
denly cast out of the cloister, and all at a loss in a
world of which they knew nothing, hurried to him
whose pi-eaching had drawn them out of their con-
ventual solitude. " Nine nuns came to me yester-
day, who had escaped from their imprisonment in
the convent of Ninipschen; Staupitzaand two other
members of Zeschau's family were of the number."
(April 8ih, 1523.) " 1 feel great pity for them,
and especially for those others who are dying in
crowds of this accursed and incestuous chastity.
This most feeble sex is united to the male by
nature, by God himself ; if they are separated,
it perishes. 0 tyrants ! 0 cruel parents of
Germany ! . . . You ask my intentions with
respect to them. In the first place, I shall
have their parents written to to receive them; if
they refuse, I shall provide for them elsewhere.
Their names are as follow: — Magdalen Staupitz,
Elsa von Cauitz, Ave Gi'ossin, Ave Schonfeld, and
her sister Margaret Schonfeld, Laneta von Golis,
Margaret Zeschau, and Catherine von Bora. They
made their escape in the most surprising manner.
. . . . Beg some money for me from your rich
courtiers, to enable me to support them for a week
or fortnight, until I restore them to their parents,
or to those who have promised me to take care of
them." (April 10th, 1523.) "I am surprised,
Spalatin, master mine, that you have sent this
woman back to me, since you know my handwriting
well, and give no other reason than the letter's not
being signed. . . . Pi"ay the elector to give some
ten florins, and a new or old gown, or something of
the kind; in short, to give to these poor souls, vir-
gins against their will." (April 22nd, 1523.)
On April 10th, 1522, Luther wi-ites to Leonard
Koppe, a wealthy bui'gess of Torgau, who had
aided nine nuns to escape from their convent,
approving of his conduct, and exhorting him not to
allow himself to be alai-med by any clamour that
may be raised against him. " You have done a
good work; and would to God we were able to
efi'ect a like deliverance for the numerous con-
sciences still held in captivity. . . . God's word is
now in the world, and not in convents." .... On
June 18th, 1523, he writes to comfort three young
ladies whom duke Henry, son of duke George,
had expelled his court for having read Luther's
writings: — " Bless those who persecute you, &c. .
. . . Unhappily, you are only too well avenged
on their injustice. You must jiity these insensates,
these madmen, who do not see that they ai'e hm-ry-
ing their souls to perdition by seeking to do you
harm." . . . . " You have already, no doubt, heard
the news that the duchess of Montsberg has
escaped, most miraculously, from the convent of
Freyberg. She is at present in my house with
two young girls, the one, Margaret Volckmarin,
daughter of a Leipsic burgher; the other, Dorothea,
daughter of a burgess of Freyberg." (October
20th, 1528.) "This hapless Elizal.etli von Reiiis-
berg, expelled from the girls' school at Altenburg,
has applied to me, after having petitioned the
prince, who had referred her to the connnissionei*s
of the sequestered property, begging me to get
you to interest yourself for her with them, ice."
(March, 1533.) " That young girl of Altenburg,
whose aged father and mother have been arrested
in their own house, has applied to me for succour
and advice. What I am to do in this business,
God only knows." (July 14tli, 1533.) From some
expressions of Luther's we discover that his good-
nature was often imposed upon by these women
who flocked to him, and that in many cases even
they were only pretended nuns: — " What numbers
of nuns have I not supported, at heavy expense.
How often have I not been deceived by pretended
nuns, mere harlots, whatever their noble birth
{(joierosas meretrices)." (August 24th, 1535.)
Luther's notions of the propriety of suppressing
religious houses were soon modified by these im-
positions. In an exordium addressed to the com-
mune of Leisnick (a.d. 1523) he dissuades from
their violent suppression, and recommends their
being gradually extinguished by forbidding the
reception of any more novices: — " As no one ought
to have foi'ce put upon him in mattei's of faith," he
goes on to say, " such as are desirous of remaining
in their convents, either frcim their advanced age,
from love of an idle life and of good cheer, or from
conscientious motives, ought neither to be expelled
nor illtreated. They must be left until their time
come as they have before been; for the Gospel
teaches us to do good even to the unworthy; and
we must take into consideration that these persons
embraced their vocation, blinded by the common
error, and have learnt no trade by which they can
support themselves The property belonging
to religious houses should be employed as follows:
— firstly, as I have just intimated, in supporting
these monks who continue in them; next a certain
sum ought to be given to those who leave (even
though they should have brought nothing to the
convent), to enable them to enter upon another
way of life, as they quit their asylum for ever, and
they may have learnt something whilst in the con-
vent. As for those who brought property into the
convent, the greater part, if not all, ought to be
restored to them; the residue should be placed in
a common chest for loans and gifts to the poor of
the district. The wish of the founders will thus be
fulfilled; since, although they suft'ered themselves
to be seduced into parting with their property for
monastic uses, still their intent w as to consecrate
it to the honour and worship of God. Now, there
is no finer worship than Ciiristiau charity, which ,
comes to the relief of the indigent; as Jesus Christ
will bear witness on the day of judgment (Matt.
ch. xxv.). . . . Yet, if any of the founder's heirs
should happen to be in want, it would be equit-
able and conformable to charity to put them in
possession of a portion of the revenues of the
foundation, even all if necessary, as it could not
have been the wish of their fathers to dejirive
their children and heirs of bread to give it to
strangers. . . . You will object to me that 1 make
the hole too large, and that on this plan but little
will be left for the common chest ; each, you will
30
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1523—1525.
say, will come and pretend that he requires so
much or so much, &c. But I have already said,
that this ought to be a labour of equity and of
charity. Let each conscientiously examine how
much he requires for his wants, how much he can
give up to the chest ; and then let the commune
weigh the circumstances in its turn, and all will go
well. And though the cupidity of some individuals
may find its advantage in this mutual accommoda-
tion, this would be infinitely preferable to the
pillage and disorder which we have witnessed in
Bohemia. ... I would not recommend the aged
to quit their monasteries; principally, because they
would only return to the world to be a burden to
others, and would be at a loss to meet, cold as
charity is no\v-a-days, with the comforts they de-
serve. By remaining within the monastery, they
will not be chargeable to any one, or obliged to
throw themselves on the care of strangers ; and
they will be enabled to do much for the salvation
of their neighbours, which in the world they would
find difticult, nay, impossible." Luther ended by
encouraging a monk to remain in his monastery: —
" I lived there myself some years, and should have
lived longer, and even up to the present time, had
my brethren and the state of the monastery allowed
of my so doing." (Feb. 28th, 1528.)
Some nuns in the Low Countries wrote to doctor
Martin Luther, commending themselves to his
prayers : pious virgins, fearing God, who supported
themselves by their own industry, and lived in
harmony. The doctor was moved with great com-
passion for them, and says: — " Poor nuns like these
must be suffered to live in their own way; and so
with the ffldkloster, founded by princes for the
nobility. But the mendicant orders ... It is
from cloisters like those of which I was just now
speaking, that able men may be drawn forth for the
ministry of the Church, and for civil government
and administration." This epoch of Luther's life
was one of overpowering toil and business, in
which he was no longer supported, as at first, by
the excitement of the struggle and the sense of dan-
ger. To 'Spalatin : — " Deliver me, I beseech you.
I am so overwhelmed by others' business, that my
life is a burthen to me. . . . Martin Luther,
courtier, not belonging to the court, and in his own
despite {Aulicim extra ciulam, et inntus)." (a.d.
1523.) " I am fully occupied, being visitor, reader,
preacher, author, auditor, actor, footman, wrestler,
and I know not what besides." (October 29th,
1528.) Parochial reform, uniformity of ceremo-
nial, the drawing up of the great Catechism, an-
swers to the new pastors, letters to the elector,
whose consent was to be obtained for every innova-
tion— here was work enough, and tedium enough;
and, with all this, his enemies left him no rest.
Erasmus published his formidable work De Libero
Arbitrio (On Free Will) against him ; which
Luther did not make up his mind to answer until
1525. The Reformation itself seemed to turn
against the reformer. His old friend, Carlstadt,
had hurried on in the path in which Luther was
walking ; and it was to check his sudden and vio-
lent innovations, that Luther had so precipitately
quitted the castle of Wartbui'g. It was not
religious authority alone that was at stake ; the
civil power was about to be brought into question.
Beyond Carlstadt, glimpses might be caught of
Miinzer; beyond the sacramentaiians and icono-
clasts, there loomed in the distance the revolt of
the peasants — a Jacquerie, a more reasonable, and
more levelling, servile war than those of antiquity,
and not less bloody.
CHAPTER in.
A.D. 1523 — 1525.
CARLSTADT.— MUNZER. — WAR OP THE PEASANTS.
" Pray for me, and help me to trample under foot
this Satan that has arisen at Wittemberg against
the Gospel, in the name of the Gospel. We have
now to combat an angel become, as he believes, an
angel of light. It will be difficult to persuade
Carlstadt to give way ; but Christ will constrain
him, if he does not yield of himself. For we are
masters of life and death ; we who believe in the
Master of life and death." (March 12th, 1523.) " I
am resolved to forbid him the pulpit, into which
he has rashly intruded without any vocation, in de-
spite of God and man." (March 19th.) " I have
angered Carlstadt by annulling his ordinations,
although I have not condemned his doctrine. Yet
I am displeased at his busying himself with cere-
monies and outward matters only, to the neglect of
the true Christian doctrine ; that is, of faith and
charity. ... By his foolish teaching, he induced
his heai'ers to fancy themselves Christians on such
accounts as — partaking of the communion in both
kinds, renouncing confession, breaking images. . . .
He has been seeking to become a new doctor, and
to impose his ordinances on the people, rising on
the ruin of my authority {pressa mea auctoiitate)."
March 30th. " This very day I took Carlstadt
aside, and begged him to publish nothing against
me, since (otherwise), we should be forced to come
to sharps with each other. Our gentleman swore
by all most sacred, to write nothing against me."
(April 21st.) . . . " We must teach the weak gently
and patiently. . . . Would you, who have been a
suckling yourself, cut off" the breasts, and hinder
others from imbibing similar nourishment 1 Did
mothers expose and desei't their children, who can-
not, as soon as born, eat like men, what would have
become of yourself ? Dear ft'iend, if you have
sucked enough, and grown enough, let others suck
and grow in their turn . . . ."
Carlstadt gave up his functions as professor and
archdeacon at Wittemberg, but not the emolu-
ments, and repaired first to Orlamunde, then to
Jena. " Carlstadt has established a printing-
office at Jena. . . But the elector and our academy
have promised, in conformity with the imperial
edict, to allow no work to be published which has
not previously been examined by the commis-
sioners. We must not allow Carlstadt and his
friends to be the only persons exempt from sub-
mission to princes." (January 7th, 1524.) " As
usual, Carlstadt is indefatigable. With his new
presses at Jena he has published, and will pub-
lish, I am told, eighteen works." (January 14th.)
'• Let us leave all sadness and anxiety to be Carl-
stadt's portion. Let us maintain the combat,
without allowing it to engross us. 'Tis God's
cause, 'tis God's business : the work will be God's,
the victory God's. He can fight and conquer
without us. If he judge us worthy of a part in
this war, we shall be devotedly ready. I write
this by way of exhorting you, and, through you,
A.D. 1523—1525.
DISPUTE WITH CARLSTADT.
others, not to be alarmed at Satan, or to suffer your
heart to be troubled. If we are unjust, must not
we be overborne ? If just, there is a just God
who will make oui- justice evident as the noon-
day. Perish who may, sui'vive who may, that is
no business of ours." (October 22nd, 1524.) " We
shall recall Carlstadt, in the name of the uni-
versity, to his duty as teacher of the word, which
he owes to Wittemberg, and from a spot whither
he had no call ; and, if he does not return, shall
accuse him to the prince." (March 14th, 1524).
Luther thought it his duty to repair to Jena ; and
Carlstadt, conceiving himself aggrieved by a ser-
mon of Luther's, requested a conference ; and
they met in Luther's apartments in presence of
numerous witnesses. After much recrimination
on both sides, Carlstadt said : " Enough, doctor,
go on preaching against me, I shall know what
course to take." Luther : " If you have anything
you long to say, write it boldly." Carlstadt : " I
will ; and without fearing any one." Luther :
" Yes, write against me publicly." Carlstadt: " If
such be your wish, I can easily satisfy it." Luther:
" Do ; I will give you a florin by way of throwing
down tlie gauntlet." Carlstadt : " A floi'in ?" Lu-
ther : " May I be a liar, if I do not." Carlstadt :
" Well ! I'll take up your gauntlet." On this,
Luther drew a golden florin from his pocket and
presented it to Carlstadt, saying, " Take it, and
attack me boldly ; up and be doing." Carlstadt
took the florin, showed it to all present, and said :
" Dear brethren, here is earnest ; this is a token
that I have a right to write against doctor Luther:
be ye all witnesses of this." Then he put it in his
purse, and gave his hand to Luther. The latter
drank to his health. Carlstadt pledged him, and
added, " Dear doctor, I pray you not to hinder
me from printing anything 1 shall wish, and not
to persecute me in any manner. I think of sup-
porting myself by my plough, and you shall be
enabled to judge of its produce." Luther: " Why
should I wish to hinder you from writing against
me ! I beg you to do it, and have given you the
florin precisely that you may not spare me. The
more violent your attacks, the more delighted I
shall be." They again gave each other their
hands, and parted.
However, as the town of Orlamunde entered too
warmly into Carlstadt's opinions, and had even
expelled its pastor, Luther obtained an order from
the elector for Carlstadt's expulsion. Carlstadt
read a solemn letter of farewell, first to the men,
then to the women. They had been called to-
gether by the tolling of the bell, and all wept.
" Carlstadt has written to the inhabitants of Orla-
munde, and has subscribed himseli, Andretc Boden-
stein, expelled, without having been heard or convicted,
by MaHin Luther. You see that I, who have been
all but a martyr, have come to making martyrs in
my turn. Egranus plays the martyr as well ; and
writes that he lias been driven away by the papists
and the Lutherans. You cannot think how widely
spread Carlstadt's doctrine is on the sacrament. . .
* * * * has returned to his senses, and asks
pardon. He, too, had been forced to quit the
country. I have interceded for him ; but I am
not sure that I shall succeed. Martin of Jena,
who had also received orders to depart, has taken
his farewell from the pulpit, all in tears, and im-
ploring pardon. The only answer he got was five
florins ; which sum, by begging through the
town, was increased by twenty-five groschen. All
this is likely to do good to preachers : it will be a
trial of their vocation, and will, at the same time,
teach them to preach and to conduct themselves
with some fear before their eyes." (October 27th,
1524.) Carlstadt repaired to Strasburg, and thence
to Bale. His doctrines approximated closely to
those of the Swiss, to ODcolampadius's, Zuinglius's,
&c. " I defer writing on the eucharist until Carl-
stadt has poured forth all his poison, as he promised
when taking a piece of gold of me. Zwin^lc
and Leo, the Jew, in Switzerland, hold the same
opinions as Carlstadt, so the scourge is spreading :
but Christ reigns, if he fights not." (November
12th, 1524.) However, he conceived it right to
reply to Carlstadt's complaint of having been
driven by him from Saxony. " In the first place,
I can safely say that I never mentioned Carlstadt
to the elector of Saxony, for I have never spoken
a word in my life to that prince, nor have ever
heard him open his lips, and have even never
seen him, except once at Worms, in the emperor's
presence, when I was examined the second day.
But it is true that I have often written to him
through Spalatin, and in particular to entreat him
to resist the spirit arising at Alstet *. But my
solicitations were so ineff'ectual as to induce me to
feel angry with the elector. Carlstadt then should
have spared such a prince the reproaches which
he has heaped upon him. ... As to duke John
Fi'ederick, I confess that I have often pointed out
to him Carlstadt's attempts and perverse am-
bition." ..." There is no joking with my lord All-
the-icorld (Herr OmnesJ; for which reason, God has
constituted authorities : it being his will that there
should be order here below."
At last, Carlstadt broke out : " I heard yester-
day of Carlstadt from a friend of mine at Stras-
burg, which city he left for Bale, and has at
length vomited forth five books, which are to be
followed by two others. I am handled as double
papist, the ally of Antichrist, and what not !"
(Dec. 14th.) "I hear from Bale, that Carl-
stadt's supporters have been punished
He has been in the town, but pi'ivily. CEcolam-
padius and Pellican have given in their adhesion to
his doctrine." (Jan. 13th, 1525.) "Carlstadt had
made up his mind to pitch his tent in Schweindorf ;
but the count of Henneberg has forbidden this by
letters express to the town council. I should like
Strauss to be treated in the same manner." (April
10th, 1525. Luther seems delighted with Carl-
stadt's declaring himself : " The devil was silent,"
he writes, " until I won him over by a florin, which,
thanks to God, has been well laid out, and I don't
repent of it." He straightway published various
pamphlets, written with wonderful energy, Against
the Heavenly Prophets : — " Men fear nothing, as if
the devil were sleeping ; whereas, he prowls around
like a cruel lion. But, as long as I live, I trust
there will be no danger ; for whilst I live, I will do
battle, hap what may ." He goes on to argue, that
all seek what is agreeable to reason only. So
with the Arians and Pelagians. So with the jjapacy,
it was a well-sounding proposition that grace could
be advantaged by fi'ee-will. The inculcation of
faith and a good conscience is more important than
* Where Miinzer lived, the leader of the revolt of the
peasants, spoken of further on.
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D, 1523—1525.
the preaching of good works ; since, if works fail,
whilst faitli remains, there is still hope of aid.
Spiritual means ought to be employed to win true
Christians to a knowledge of their sins : — " But for
rude men, for my lord Every-body {Ilerr Omnes),
they must be driven, corporally and rudely, to
labour and do their allotted works, so that will ye,
nill ye, they may be pious outwardly, under tlie law
and the sword, as we keep wild beasts in cages and
chained. . . . The spirit of the new prophets as-
pires to be the highest spii-it, a spirit which has
eaten the Holy Ghost, feathers and all. Bible, they
cry out ; yes, bibel, bubel, babd. Well ! Sith the
evil spirit is so obstinate in his opinion, I will not
give way to him any more than I have done before.
I will speak of images : firstly, according to the
law of Moses, and 1 will say, that Moses forbids
only images of God. Let us then confine ourselves
to praying princes to put down images, and let us
pluck them out of our own hearts." Further on,
Luther breaks out into ironical surprise, that the mo-
dern iconoclasts do not push their pious zeal so far,
as to get rid of their money, and of all precious ar-
ticles which have figures upon them. " To aid the
weakness of these holy folk, and deliver them from
that by which they are defiled, they should be gal-
lants with but little in their fobs. The lieareuly
voice it seems is not strong enough to induce them
to throw away everything of themselves : they need
a little violence."
" . ... When I discussed the question of ima-
ges at Orlamunde, with Carlstadt's disciples, and
pi'oved by the context, that in every passage they
quoted from Moses, the allusion was to the idols of
the pagans ; one of them, who, no doubt, fancied
himself the ablest, got up and said to me — ' Do thou
listen ! 1 may be allowed to thee and thou you, if
thou art a Christian.' I replied, ' Speak to me as
thou listest.' But I noticed that he would much
more willingly still have struck me ; he was so filled
with Carlstadt's spirit, that the others could not
get him to be silent. ' If thou wilt not follow
Moses,' he went on to say, ' thou must at least
admit the Gospel ; but thou hast thrown the Gos-
pel under the table, and it must be taken up ; no,
it cannot stay there.' 'What then does the Gos-
pel say V I replied. ' Jesus says in the Gospel (so
he answered), I cannot say the place, but my bro-
thers here know it well, that the bride ought to
take off" her shift on the wedding night. There-
fore, we must take off and break all images, in
order to become pure and free from the creature.'
Thus he ... . What could I do with men of
this sort ? At all events, it enabled me to learn
that breaking images was, according to the Gospel,
taking off" the bride's shift on her wedding night.
These words, and the speech about the Gospel's
being Hung under the table, he had heard from his
master ; for, no doubt, Carlstadt had accused me
of throwing down the Gospel, in order to imply
that he was come to raise it up. This pride has
been the cause of all his misfortunes, and has
driven him out of the light into darkness. . . .
We are glad of heart and full of courage, wrestling
with melancholy, timid, dejected spirits, that fear
the rustle of a leaf, though not havinsj the fear of
God, as is usual with the wicked. (Psalm xxv.)
Their passion is to domineer over God, and his
word, and his works. They would not be so bold
were not God invisible, intangible. Were he a
visible man, present to their eyes, he would put
them to flight with a straw. Whoso is inspired
by God to speak, speaks freely and publicly,
without giving himself any concern whether
he is alone or unsupported. Thus did Jere-
miah ; and I may boast of having done thus
likewise*. It is then beyond a doubt the devil,
that apostate and homicidal spirit, who slips into
the background and then excuses himself, saying,
that first he had not been strong enough in the
faith. No; the Spirit of God does not make such
excuses. I know thee well, my devil. ... If you
ask them (Carlstadt's partisans) how this sublime
spirit is attained, they do not I'efer you to the Gos-
pel, but to their dreams, to imaginary spaces: ' Lie
thee listlessly down,' say they, ' as I have lain me
down, and thou wilt receive it in like manner.
The heavenly voice will make itself heard, and
God will speak to thee face to face.' If you then
persist in inquiring what tliis listlessness {ennui) is,
they know as much about it as Dr. Carlstadt does of
Greek and Hebrew. . . . Do you not recognize the
devil in this, the enemy of divine order ? Do you
see how he opens wide his mouth, crying, ' Spirit,
Spirit, Spiiit,' and, whilst so crying, how he
destroys bridges, roads, ladders; in a word, all
means by which the Spirit can reach thee: to wit,
the external order established of God in holy
baptism, in signs, and in his own word ? They
wish you to scale the skies and ride on the wind,
and tell you neither how, nor when, nor where, nor
what; like them, you are to leai'n it of yourself."
" Martin Luther, an unworthy minister and
evangelist at Wittembei'g, to all Christians in
Strasburg, loving friends in God: — I would will-
ingly endure Carlstadt's intemperance in regard to
images; and I have, indeed, done more injury to
images by my writings, than he will ever do by all
his violence and fury. But what is intolerable is
the exciting and instigating men to all this, as if it
were their bounden duty, and that thei'e were no
other proof of Christianity than breaking images.
Beyond doubt, works do not make the Christian ;
these outward matters, such as images and the Sab-
bath, are left free in the New Testament, as well as
all the other ceremonies of the law. St. Paul says,
' We know that idols are nothing in the world.'
If they are nothing, wherefore shackle and torture
the conscience of Christians about them ? If they
are nothing, it matters not whether they are tum-
bled down or are left standing.'' He proceeds to a
loftier subject, the question of the real presence;
the higher question of the Christian symbolism, of
which that of images is the lower side. It was on
this point, chiefly, that Luther found himself at
variance with the Swiss reformei-s, and that Carl-
stadt was brought into union with them, however
far removed he might be from them by the boldness
of his political opinions. " I acknowledge, that if
Carlstadt, or any one else, could have proved to me
five years ago that the sacramental elements are
* "Tlie spirit of these prophets has invariably chival-
rousiy taken to flight, yet see how it glorifies itself as a
magnanimous and chivalrous spirit. But I, I presented
myself in Leipsic to dispute in presence of a hosiile popula-
tion. I presented myself at Augsburg, witlunit safe-conduct,
before my greatest enemies; at Worms, before Caesar and
the whole empire, although well aware that the safe-conduct
was trampled upon. My spirit has remained free, like a
flower of the field." (ad. 1524.)
A.D. 1523—1525.
THE WAR OF THE PEASANTS.
33
bread and wine only, he would have done me
a great service. I was then strongly tempted,
and writhed, and struggled, and should have been
most happy to have found a solution of the
mystery. I saw clearly that I might so givp
papistry the most fearful blow. . . . There were
two more who wrote to me on this point, and abler
men than doctor Carlstadt; and who did not, like
him, torture words to suit their fancy. But I
am bound down, I cannot set myself free; the text
is too powerful, nothing can tear it from my mind.
Even now, if any one could convince by solid
reasons that there is only bread and wine, there
would be no need for attacking me so furiously. I
am, unhappily, only too inclined to this interpreta-
tion as often as I feel my Adam within me. But
what doctor Carlstadt imagines and promulgates
on this subject touches me so little, that I am but
the more confirmed in my opinion ; and, if I had not
before thought so, such idle tales found out of the
Scriptures and in the clouds as it were, would be
enough to convince me of the fallacy of his opinion."
He liad previously written in the pamphlet, Against
the Celestial Prophets : — " Carlstadt says that he can-
not reasonably conceive how the body of Jesus Christ
can be reduced into so small a compass. But if we
consult reason, we shall no longer have faith in any
mystery.". ... In the next page, Luther adds
the following incredibly audacious piece of coarse
humour: — " Yon seem to think that the drunkard,
Christ, having drunk too much at supper, bewildered
his disciples with superfluous words."
This violent polemic war of Luther's on Carl-
stadt, was daily embittered by the fearful symp-
toms of general disturbance which threatened
Germany. The doctrines of the bold theologian
responded to the thoughts and desires which already
filled the minds of the masses in Suabia, Thuringia,
Alsace, and the whole western half of the empire.
The lower classes, the peasantry, who had so long
slumbered under the weight of feudal oppression,
heard princes and the learned speak of liberty, of
enfranchisement, and they applied to themselves
that which was not spoken for them*. The
reclamation of the poor peasants of Suabia will
remain, in its simple barbarism, a monument of
courageous moderation. By degrees, the eternal
hatred of the poor to the rich was aroused; less
blind than in the jacquerie, but striving after a
systematic form, which it was only to attain after-
wards, in the time of the English levellers, and com-
plicated with all the forms of religious democracy,
which were supposed to have been stifled in the
• The peasants did not wait for the Reformation to break
out into rebellion, but had risen up in 1491 and in 1502.
The free towns had followed the example ; Erfurth in 1509,
Spires in 1512, and Worms in 1513. Disturbances broke
out again in 1524; but this was the nobles' doing. Franz
of Sickingen, their leader, thought the moment was come
for despoiling the ecclesiastical princes of their temporalities,
and boldly laid siege to Treves. He is said to have been
under the guidance of the celebrated reformers, CEcolam-
padius and Bucer, and of Hutten, who, at the time, was in
the service of the archbishop of Mentz. The duke of
Bavaria, the palatine, and the landgrave of Hesse, ad-
vanced to raise the siege, and were for attacking Mentz, in
order to punish the archbishop for his personal connivance
of tjickingen. This nobleman fell ; Hutten was exiled, and,
from this moment without an asylum, but always writing,
always violent and a prey to passion ; he died no long time
afterwards in extreme want.
middle age. Lollards, Beghards, and a crowd of
apocalyptic visionaries were in motion. At a later
moment, the rallying cry was the necessity for a
second baptism: at the beginning, the aim was a
terrible war against the established order of things,
against every kind of order— a war on property, as
being a robbery of the poor; a war on knowledge,
as destructive of natural equality, and a tempting
of God, who had revealed all to his saints. Books
and pictures were inventions of the devil. The
peasants first rose up in the Black Forest, and
then around Heilbronn and Frankfort, and in the
country of Baden and Spires; whence the flame
extended into Alsace, and nowhere did it assume a
more fearful character. It reached the Palatinate,
Hesse, and Bavaria. The leader of the insurgents
in Suabia was one of the petty nobles of the valley
of the Necker, the celebrated Goetz of Berlichingen,
Goetz with the Iron Hand, who pretended they had
forced him to be their general against his will.
" Complaint and Loving Demand of tlie Con-
federation of Peasants, with their Christian prayers ;
the whole set forth very briefly in twelve principal
articles. — To the Christian reader, peace and divine
grace through Christ ! There are, now-a-days,
many anti-Christians who seize the occasion of the
confederation of the peasants to blaspheme the
Gospel, saying: 'These are the fruits of the new
doctrines; obedience is at an end; each man starts
up and spurns control; the people flock together
and assemble tumultuously, seeking to reform and
depose authorities, ecclesiastic and secular; and,
perhaps, even to murder them.' To these perverse
and impious allegations the following articles are
answers. In the first place, they turn aside the dis-
grace with which God's word is attempted to be
covered; in the second, they, by Christian pi-oof,
clear the peasants from the reproach of disobedi-
ence and revolt. The Gospel is not a cause of in-
surrection or of trouble ; it is a message which an-
nounces the Christ, the promised Messiah; this
message, and the life it teaches, are love, peace,
patience, and union alone. Know, too, that all who
believe in this Ck|-ist will be united in love, peace,
and patience. Since, then, the articles of the
peasants, as will be more distinctly shown hereafter,
have no other aim than to secure the hearing of
the Gospel, and the living in conformity with it,
how can an ti- Christians call the Gospel a cause of
ti'ouble and disobedience ? If the anti-Christians
and the enemies of the Gospel oppose demands of
the kind, it is not the Gospel which is the cause, it
is the devil, the mortal enemy of the Gospel, who,
through disbelief, has excited in his victims the '
hope of crushing and effacing God's word, which is
only peace, love, and union. Hence, it clearly fol-
lows that the peasants, who, in their articles, de-
mand such a Gospel for their edification and the
regulation of their life, cannot be called disobedient
or revolters. If God calls and invites us to live ac-
cording to his word, if he choose to hearken to us,
who will blame God's pleasure, who impeach his
judgment, who strive against what he wills to do i
He heard the children of Israel when they cried unto
him, and delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh.
Cannot he still save his own at the present day ?
Yes, he will save them, and speedily ! Read, then,
the following articles. Christian reader; read them
carefully, and judge."
The articles follow : —
34
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1523—1525.
I. " In the first place, it is our humble prayer
and request, our unanimous wish, to enjoy hence-
forward the power and the right of electing and
choosing a pastor ourselves, with the power of de-
posing him if he conduct himself improperly. The
pastor whom we choose must preach the holy Gos-
pel to us clearly, in its purity, without any additions
of human precept or command. For, by always
having the true faith declared to us, we are enabled
to pray to God, to beseech his grace, to form this
ti'ue faith within us, and to strengthen it. If the
divine grace be not formed within us, we still re-
main flesh and blood, and then we are worthless.
'Tis clearly seen in Scripture that we can only reach
God by the true faith, and attain beatitude by his
mercy. Such a guide and pastor, then, fulfilling
his office as instituted in Scripture, is indispensable
to us."
II. " Since the lawful tenth is established in the
Old Testament (which the New has confirmed in
everything), we will pay the lawful tenth of grain,
but after suitable sort. , . . Being henceforward
minded that the elders of a district receive and col-
lect such tenth, supply the pastor elected by the
district with sufficient for the fit support of him-
self and family, acquainting the district therewith,
and apply the remainder to the relief of the poor:
any surplus beyond should be reserved for the
charges of war, of convoy, and other like things, so
as to relieve poor folk from the taxes levied on
those accounts. If, on the other hand, it be found
that one or more villages have, in the hour of want,
sold their tithes, the purchasers shall have nothing
to fear from us, for we will enter into arrangements
with them according to circumstances, so as to in-
demnify them proportionally as we shall be able.
But as for those who, instead of acquiring the tithe
of a village by purchase, have — either they or their
ancestors — forcibly taken possession of it, we owe
them nothing and shall give them nothing; this
tithe is to be employed as specified above. With
regard to small tithes, and the tithe of blood (of
cattle), we will in no wise pay them, for God the
Lord created animals to be fre^y used by man.
We consider this tithe to be an unlawful tithe, in-
vented by men; wherefore we shall no more pay it."
In their Ilird article the peasants declare
that they will no longer be treated as the property
of their lords, " for Jesus Christ, by his precious
blood, has redeemed all without exception, the
shepherd the same as the emperor." They will be
free, but only according to Scripture ; that is to
say, without any licentiousness, and duly recog-
nizing authority ; for the Gospel teaches them to
be humble, and to obey the powers that be " in all
fitting and Cliristlan tlnmji'."
IV. "It is contrary to justice and charity that
the poor should have no right in game, in birds,
and in the fish of the running waters, or that they
should be compelled to endure, without remon-
strance, the enormous damage done to their fields
by the beasts of the forests, since when God
created man, he gave him power over all animals
without distinction." They add, that in conformity
with Gospel precepts, they will respect the rights
of those nobles who can prove by title-deeds that
they purchased their right of fishing ; but that the
rest shall lose all without indemnity.
V. "Those woods and forests which wei-e anciently
held in common, but have passed into the hands
of a third party in any other way than by fair
purchase, ought to return to their original pro-
prietary, that is, to the commune ; and every
inhabitant should have the right to take out of
them such proportions of fuel as shall seem good to
the elders."
VI. They require the services imposed upon
them, and which daily become more oppressive, to
be alleviated; desiring to serve " like their fathers,
after God's word."
VII. The seignior must not require more gra-
tuitous services from the peasants than is prescribed
by their mutual covenant ( Vereinigung).
VIII. The rents on many lands are grievously
burthensome. The lords are required to accept
the arbitrement of ii-reproachable persons, and to
lower the rents according to equity, " that the
peasant may not toil in vain, since the labourer is
worthy of his hire."
IX. Justice is partially administered, and new
penalties constantly imposed. No one is to be
favoui-ed, and the ancient rules to be the law.
X. All fields and meadows taken from the
common land, otherwise than by equitable pur-
chase, to return to the commune.
XI. Fines on deaths are revolting, and in open
opposition to God's will, "being a spoiling of the
widow and the orphan," and are to be wholly and
for ever abolished.
XII " If it happen that any one or
more of the preceding articles be opposed to Scrip-
ture (which we do not think is the case), we
renounce such beforehand. If, on the contrary,
Scripture suggest to us any others on the oppi-es-
sion of one's neighbour, we reserve all such, and
declare our adhesion to them equally beforehand.
May the peace of Jesus Christ be with us all !
Amen."
Luther could not be silent at this great crisis.
The nobles accused him of being the originator of
these troubles. The peasants availed themselves
of his name, and prayed him to be the arbitei-.
He did not shrink from the dangerous office ; and
in his reply to their twelve articles, acts as judge
between the prince and the people. In none of his
writings has he displayed more elevation.
Exhortation to Peace, in reply to the Ttcelre
Articles of the Peasants of Suabia, and also in oppo-
sition to the spirit of murder and robbery evinced by
the other peasants riotously assembled. " The pea-
sants now assembled in Suabia have just di'awn up
and circulated, in print, twelve articles, containing
their complaints against the powers that be. What
I most approve of in this document, is their
declaration in the twelfth article, of their readi-
ness to receive any better evangelical instruction
than their own on the subject of their griefs. In
fact, if such be their true intentions (and as they
have avowed their designs in the face of men,
without fearing the light, I cannot conclude other-
wise, a happy end to all these troubles may yet
be looked for. And I, who am also of those who
make the Holy Scriptures their study on this
earth, I, to whom they apply by name (appealing
to me ill one of their printed statements), I feel
myself singularly emboldened by this declaration of
theirs to publish to the world my opinion also on
the subject in question, in confoi-mity with the
precepts of charity which ought to bind all men
together. By so doing, I shall free myself both
A.D. 1523—1525.
LUTHER'S REMONSTRANCES.
35
before God and men from the reproach of having
contributed to the evil by silence, should this end
fatally. Perhaps, too, they have only made this
declaration by waj' of a blind ; and, no doubt,
there are enow evil-disposed persons amongst
thera for this, since it is impossible that all should
be good Christians in so vast a multitude ; it is
the more likely that many of them make the
honesty of the rest a cloak for their own evil
designs. Well, if there be imposture in tliis
declaration, I forewarn the impostors that they
will not succeed, and that success would be their
damnation, their eternal loss. This business in
which we are engaged is great, and full of peril ;
affecting both the kingdom of God and that of
the world. In fact, if the revolt should spread
and be triumphant, both would perish ; both
secular government and God's word, and the
whole land of Germany would be laid waste.
Under such grave circumstances, then, we feel
impelled to give our advice freely on all things,
and without regard to persons. At the same
time, we are all of us no less bounden to be-
come at last attentive and obedient, and to
cease closing our ears and hearts, the which has
called forth the fulness of God's wrath and his
most fearful thunders (seinen volleii Gang und
Schicamj). The numerous alarming sights which
have in these latter times appeared in heaven and
earth, announce great calamities and unheard-of
changes to Germany. To our misfortune, we have
been but little moved by them ; but God will not
the less pursue the course of his chastisements,
until he at last softens our heads of iron."
First Part. To the Princes and Nobles. — " We
have no one on earth to thank for all this disorder
and insurrectionary movement, if it be not you, ye
princes and lords, and you, above all, ye blind
bishops, insensate priests and monks, who, even to
this day, hardened in your perversity, cease not to
exclaim against the holy Gospel, albeit you know it
for just and good, and that you can say nothing
against it. At the same time, as secular authori-
ties, you are the executioners and leeches of the
poor, sacrificing every thing to your unbridled
luxury and pride, until the people neither will nor
can endure you any more. The sword is already at
your throats, and you yet think yourselves so firm
in the saddle that you cannot be overthrown. With
this impious security of yours, you will break your
necks. Many a time have I exhorted you to bear
in mind this verse (Psalm cvii.), ' Effiindit con-
temptum super principes' (He poureth contempt
upon princes). You are doing your utmost to have
these words fulfilled in you ; you will have the
mace, already uplifted, fall and crush you ; ad-
vices, counsels, are superfluous. Nevertheless, the
signs of God's wrath on earth and in the heavens
are addressed to you. 'Tis you, and your crimes,
that God wishes to punish. If these peasants who
attack you now are not the ministers of his will,
others will arise. Should you defeat them, you
would no less be conquered. God would raise up
others. He wishes to strike you, and he will strike
you. You fill up the measm-e of your iniquity, by
imputing this calamity to the Gospel, and to my
teaching. Go on calumniating. You will now
learn what my doctrine is, what the Gospel is ;
there is another at the door who will teach you, if
you do not amend. Have 1 not ever zealously and
ardently exhoi-ted the people to obedience unto
authority, even to yom-s, tyrannical and intolerable
as it has been ? Who has combated sedition more
than I ? And so the prophets of murder hate me
as much as you do. You persecuted my Gospel by
every means in your power, whilst this Gospel was
inducing the people to pray for you, and aiding to
keep up your tottering power. And, truly, if I
sought revenge, I need now only laugh in my sleeve,
and look on whilst the peasants are at their work :
I might even make common cause with thera, and
envenom the wound. God preserve me from
such thoughts ! Wherefore, dear lords, friends or
enemies, scorn not my loyal aid, albeit I am but a
poor man ; scorn not either this i-ebellion, I beseech
you: not that I mean to say that they are too
strong for you; it is not they I would have you
fear, but God, the angry Lord. If he wishes to
punish you (you have only deserved it too well),
he will punish you ; and if there be not peasants
enough, he will change the stones into peasants —
one, in his hands, would slay a hundred of yours.
As many as you are, neither your cuii'asses, nor
your might, would save you.
" If you are still open to advice, dear lords, in
God's name, retreat a little from before the wrath
which you see let loose. One fears and shuns a
drunken man. Cease your exactions; give truce to
your sharp tyranny; treat the peasants as a man in
his senses treats madmen, or the drunken. Do not
plunge into a struggle with them; you cannot
know how it mil end. Employ mildness at first,
for fear a slight spark, spreading all around, should
kindle throughout Germany such a fire as cannot
be extinguished. You will be no losers by mild-
ness ; and even if you should, peace will indemnify
you a hundred-fold. War may engulph and ruin
you, body and soul. The peasants have drawn up
twelve articles, some of which contain such just
demands, as to dishonour you before God and
men, and to reahse Psalm cvii., for they cover
the princes with contempt. Now I could easily
draw up other articles against you, and more im-
portant ones, perhaps, as regards your government
of Germany, as I have done in my book To the
German Nobility. But my words have been to you
as the passing wind; and therefore, you have now
to undergo all these reclamations from peculiar in-
terests. As to the first article, you cannot deny
them the fi-ee choice of their own pastors. They
wish to have the Gospel preached to them. Autho-
rity cannot and ought not to hinder this, but ought
to allow every one to teach and to believe what he
thinks right, whether it be the Gospel or falsehood :
it is enough to prohibit the preaching of disorder
and sedition. The other articles, touching the
material condition of the peasants, fines on deaths,
accumulation of services due, &c., are equally just;
for authority was not instituted for its own interests,
or to make subjects the tools of its caprices and bad
passions, but for the interest of the people. Now
yoiu' crying exactions cannot be long endm-ed.
What would it benefit the peasant to see his fields
bear as many florins as blades of grass, or grains of
wheat, if his lord should despoil him in the same pro-
portion, and waste, like straw, the money he draws
from him, in dress, castles, and feastings ? What
it most behoveth to do, is to retrench all this luxury,
and stop up the holes by which money escapes, so
that something may be left in the peasant's pocket.
d2
30
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1523—1525.
Second Part. To the Peasants. — "Thus far,
dear f'rieuds, jou have seen but one side. I have
set forth that the princes and lords who pro-
hibit the preaching of the Gospel, and who bow
down the people with intolerable burthens, have
deserved that God should hurl them from their
seats, for they have sinned against God and man,
and are without excuse. Nevertheless, it is for
you to prosecute your enterprise conscientiously
and justly. If you are conscientious, God will
aid you ; though you should even momentarily
succumb, you would eventually triumph ; such
of you as should fall in the struggle would be
saved. But if justice and conscience be against
you, you will succumb ; and though even you
should not succumb, but slay all the princes, you
would be none the less lost for ever, body and
soul. This is no jesting matter. Your bodies and
life eternal are at stake. You have to weigh well,
not your strength and the wrongs of your adver-
saries, but whether you are proceeding justly and
conscientiously. Believe not, I beseech you, the
prophets of murder whom Satan has raised up
amongst you, and who come from him, although
they invoke the holy name of Gospel. They will
hate me for this advice which I am giving jou, and
will call me hypocrite ; but I care not. My wish
is to save from God's wrath the good and honest
amongst you ; I fear not the rest, and reck not of
their contempt. I know One who is stronger than
them all ; and He teaches me, by Psalm iii., to do
what I am now doing. The huudx'ed thousand
affright not me
" You call on God's name, and pretend to act
according to his word. Then, forget not, above
all, that God punishes him who calls upon his name
in vain. Dread his wrath. Who are you, and
what is the world ? Forget you that He is the
omnipotent and terrible God, the God of the de-
luge, and who rained his thunders upon Sodom ?
Now, it is plain, that you honour not his name.
Does not God say, ' They that take the sword, shall
perish with the sword V And St. Paul, ' Be ye all
obedient to authoi'ity in all respect and honour V
How can you, after this, still pretend that you act
according to the Gospel ? Beware; a fearful judg-
ment awaits you. But, you saj', authority is
wicked, intolerable, will not allow us the Gospel,
overwhelms us with burthens beyond all measure,
is ruining us, body and soul. To this I reply,
that the iniquity and injustice of authority are no
excuse for revolt, for the punishment of the wicked
does not appertain to every man. Besides, the
natural law says, that no one should be judge in
his own cause, or avenge himself, for the Pi'overb
truly says, ' To strike the striker is naught.' The
divine law teaches us the same thing : ' Ven-
geance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'
Your enterprise, therefore, is not only contrary to
law, according to the Bible and the Gospel, but also
to the natural law and simple equity. You cannot
go on with it except you can prove that you have
been called to it by a new commandment of God's,
directed to yourselves, and confirmed by miracles.
You see the mote in the eye of authority, but you
cannot see the beam in your own. Authority is
unjust in interdicting you the Gospel, and over-
whelming you with burthens ; but how much more
unjust are you, who, not content with interdicting
God's word, trample it under foot, and arrogate the
power reserved to God alone ? Again, who is the
greater thief, (yourselves shall be the judge,) he
who takes a part, or he who takes all ? Now,
authority takes your goods unjustly from you ; but
you strip it, not of goods only, but of body and
life. You assert loudly, it is true, that you will
leave it something ; who will believe you 1 You
have taken power from it ; who takes all does not
fear to take part ; when the wolf devours the sheep,
it devours ears as well.
" And how is it you do not see, my friends, that
if your doctrine were true, there would no longer
be on earth authority, order, or justice of any kind ?
Each would be his own judge ; and there would
be nothing to be seen but murder, desolation, and
robbery. What would you do, if, assembled as you
now are, each affected to be independent, to do him-
self justice, and be his own avenger 1 Would you
allow it ? Would you not say, that judgment be-
longs to one's superiors 1 This law must be alike
observed, by pagans, Turks, and Jews, if there is
to be order and peace on earth. So far from bemg
Christians, you are worse than pagans and Turks.
What will Jesus Christ say, seeing his name so
profaned by you ? Dear friends, I greatly fear
Satan has sent amongst you prophets of murder,
who covet the empire of this world, and who think
to compass it through you, careless of the dangers,
spiritual and temporal, into which they are plung-
ing you.
" But, now, to pass to the Gospel law. This
does not bind pagans like the law of which we
have just been treating. Does not Jesus Christ,
from whom ye are named Christians, say, ' Resist
not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the
right cheek, turn to him the other also ?'....
Do you hear him, ye assembled Christians 1 How
does your conduct square with this command ? If
you know not how to endure, as our Lord requires,
quickly resign his name; you are unworthy of it;
or he will suddenly deprive you of it himself."
(Here Luther quotes other scriptural injunctions to
forbearance.) " Suffer, suffer — the cross, the cross
— this is the law of Christ; there is none other. . . .
Ah ! my friends, if you act thus, when will you attain
unto that other command which bids you love your
enemies and do them good ? . . . Oh ! would to
God that the greater number of us were rather
good and pious pagans, observing the natural law !
To show you how far you have been led astray by
your prophets, I have only to remind you of some
examples which tlirow light on the law of the
Gospel. Look at Jesus Christ and St. Peter in the
gai'den of Gethsemane. Did not St. Peter suppose
that he was doing right in defending his Master
and his Lord from those who were about to deliver
Him to the executioners ? And yet, you know that
Jesus Christ upbraided him as a murderer for hav-
ing resisted sword in hand. Again: what is the
conduct of Jesus Christ on the cross ? Does he not
pray for his persecutors ? does he not say, ' Father,
forgive them, they know not what they do ?' And
was not Jesus Christ glorified after having suffered,
and has not his kingdom prevailed and triumphed ?
In like manner, God would aid you if you knew how
to suffer as he requires. To take an example of
the pi-esent day: how has it happened that neither
emperor nor pope could anything against me ?
The greater their efforts to stay and destroy the
Gospel, the greater its growth and power. I have
A.D. 1523—1525.
LUTHER'S REMONSTRANCES.
37
drawn no sword, raised no revolt, liave ever
preached obedience to authority even when perse-
cuting me, have relied always on God, and put my
trust in him. Hence, despite the pope and tyrants,
he has not only preserved my life, itself a miracle,
but has favoured and diffused my Gospel more and
more. And how, now, are you thinking to serve
the Gospel by directly contravening it ? In truth,
you are inflicting a fearful wound on it in the minds
of men; crushing it, if 1 may so say, by your per-
verse and mad attempts.
" I tell you all this, dear friends, to show you how
you profane Christ's name and his holy laws.
However just your demands may be, it becomes not
a Christian to fight or to use violence: we must
suffer injustice; such is our law. (1 Cor. vi.) 1
repeat to you, then, act now as you like; but lay
aside the name of Christ, and do not shamefully
take it as a cloak for your impious conduct. I
will not permit it. I will not tolerate it. I
will tear this name from you by every effort
of which I am capable, to the last drop of my
blood Not that I wish by this to
justify authority; the injuries inflicted by it are, I
acknowledge, immense; but what I wish is that, if,
unhappily, (may God avert it !) if, I say, you come
into collision, men may call neither party Christians.
It will be a war of pagans, and nothing else; for
Christians do not fight with swords and harque-
busses, but with the cross and patience; even as
their general, Jesus Christ, does not handle the
sword, but suffers himself to be bound to the cross.
Their triumph does not consist in dominion and
power, but in submission and humility. The arms
of our chivalry have no corporeal efficacy; their
strength is in the Most High.
" Call yourselves, then, men who wish to follow
nature, and not endure evil. Such is the name
which suits you ; and if you do not take it, but
persist in retaining and constantly calling upon the
name of Christ, I can only consider you as my
enemies, as those of the Gospel, like the pope and
the emperor. Now, know that in this case I have
made up my mind to refer myself wholly to God,
and to implore him, in order to enlighten you, to turn
against you, and to shipwreck your enterprise. I
shall so risk my life, as 1 have done by opposing
the pope and the emperor ; for I see plainly that
the devil having been unable to get the better of
me through them, seeks to exterminate and de-
vour me through the prophets of murder who are
among you. Well, let hira devour me ; the morsel
will not be easy of digestion. However, dear
friends, I humbly pray you, and as a friend who
wishes your good, to reflect well before you proceed
further, and to spare me fighting and praying
against you ; albeit I myself am but a poor sinner,
still I know that I should be so justified in tliis
matter that God would infaflibly listen to my
prayers. He has himself taught us in the holy
Pater Noster, to pray that his name may be halloiced
on earth as it is in heaven. It is impossible for you
to have the same trust in God ; since Scripture and
your conscience condemn you, and tell you that you
are acting like pagans and enemies of the Gospel' If
you were Christian you would not be using the fist
and sword, but saying, ' Bdhxr us from evll,^ and
' Thy will be done' (here follow texts from Scripture
in illustration). But you wish yourselves to be your
own God and Saviour ; the true God, the true
Saviour abandon you then. The demands which
you have drawn up are not contrary to natural
law and equity in their tenor, but in the violence
with which you would force them from authority ;
and he who has drawn them up is not a pious and
sincere man, for he has referred to numerous
chapters from Scripture, without citing the verses,
in order to throw an air of speciousness around your
entei'prise, and to seduce you and plunge you into
dangers. On reading these chapters, one does not
see much bearing on your enterprise, but the con-
trary rather ; to wit, to live and act Christianly.
He must, I take it, be a seditious prophet who
would wish to attack the Gospel through you.
May God be pleased to oppose him, and to keep
you from him.
" In the first place, you boast in your preface, of
only asking to be allowed to live according to the
Gospel. But do you not yourselves confess that
you are in rebellion ? And how, I ask you, have
you the audacity to colour such conduct with the
holy name of the Gospel I You cite the example
of the children of Israel ; you say that God heard
the cries they raised unto him, and delivered them.
Why then not follow this boasted example ? Call
on God, as they did, and wait till he send you also
a Moses, who will prove his mission by his mira-
cles. The children of Israel did not rebel against
Pharaoh ; they did not combine for mutual aid as
you propose to do. This example then is directly
adverse to you, and damns instead of saving you.
No more is it true that your articles, as you pro-
claim in your preface, teach the Gospel, and are m
conformity with it. Is there one out of the twelve
which contains any point of evangelical docti-ine ?
Have they not all the one single object of enfran-
chising your persons and your goods ? Do they
not all treat of temporal things ? You, you covet
power and worldly goods, and will endure no
wrong. The Gospel, on the contrary, takes no
care of these matters, and makes external Ufe con-
sist in suffering, in bearing injustice, the cross, in
patience, and contempt of life and of all worldly
matters. You must either then renounce your
enterprise, and consent to suffer wrong, if you
wish to bear the name of Christians ; or else,
if you persist in your resolution, lay down this
name and take another. Choose ; there is no
alternative. You say that the Gospel is hindered
from reaching you. I reply, that there is no
power earthly or heavenly which can hinder it.
Public teaching marches free under the heavens;
and is as little bound to any place as the star
which, traversing the clouds, announced to the
wise men of the East the birth of Jesus Christ. . .
If the Gospel be interdicted the town or village in
which you are* follow it wheresoever it may be
preached. . . Jesus Christ has said (Matthew x.),
'But when they persecute you in this city, flee
ye into another.' He does not say, 'If they per-
secute you, stay there, conspire against the lords
in the name of the Gospel, and make yourselves
masters of the town.' What then are those Chris-
tians who, in the Gospel's name, turn robbers and
thieves ? Have they the effrontery to call them-
selves evangelical ? "
Reply to first article:—" If the authorities will
not cheerfully support the pastor desired by the
commune, the latter," says Luther, " may charge
itself with his support. If the authorities will not
38
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1523—1525.
tolerate the said pastor, let the faithful follow him
into another commune."
Reply to the second article: — "You desire to
dispose of a tithe which is not yours; this would
be a robbery. If you wish to do good, do it out
of your own means, not those of others. God
says through Isaiah, 'A stolen offering I detest.'"
Reply to the third article:—" You wish to apply
to the flesh the Christian liberty taught by the
Gospel. Had not Abraham and the other patri-
archs, as well as the prophets, slaves ? Read
St. Paul ; the empire of this world cannot subsist
without inequality of persons."
Reply to the eight last articles: — " As to your
articles touching game, fuel, services, rent, &c., I
refer them to the lawyers, it is not for me to judge
of them; but I repeat to you that the Christian is
a martyr, and has no care for all these things.
Cease, then, speaking of Christian law, and rather
say it is human law, the natui'al law which you
claim; for the Christian law commands you to
suffer, as regards these matters, and to complain
to God alone."
" Dear friends, such is my teaching in reply to
I your request to me. May it be God's will that you
faithfully keep your promise, and be guided
according to Scripture. Do not all cry out at
once — Luther is a flatterer of princes; he speaks
contrary to the Gospel; but read first, and con-
sider whether what I say is not founded on God's
word.
"Exhortation to both parties: — Since, then, my
friends, you neither of you are maintaining a
Christian cause, but acting alike against God,
forego, I beseech you, all violence. Otherwise,
you will cover all Germany with horrible and
endless carnage. For as you are both equally
involved in injustice, you will but rush to mutual
destruction, and God will chastise one offender by
i the other.
" You, lords, have Scripture and history against
you, which teach you the punishment which has
ever followed tyranny. You are yourselves ty-
rants and executioners, for you interdict the
Gospel. There is no hope, then, that you will
escape the fate which has hitherto visited your
equals. Consider the empires of the Assyrians,
the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, how they
all perished by the sword after having begun by
the sword. God wished to prove that it is he
who judges the earth, and that no injustice shall
remain unpunished.
" You, peasants, you, too, have Scripture and
experience against you. Revolt has never ended
well, and God has sternly cared that the text,
' They that take the sword, shall perish with the
sword,' shall not be a deceitful oite. Though you
should conquer all the nobles; when conquerors of
the nobles, you would turn upon and rend your-
selves like wild beasts. The Spirit not reigning
over you, but flesh and blood only, it would not
be long before God would send an evil spirit,
a destroying spirit, as he did to Sichem and its
king
" What fills me with grief and pity (and would
to heaven that it could be redeemed with my life !)
are the two irreparable misfortunes which must
fall upon both parties. In the first place, as you
all fight for injustice, it is inevitable that those
who shall perish in the struggle will be evei'last-
i- .
ingly lost, body and soul; for they will die in their
sins, without repentance, and unsuccoured by grace.
The other misfortune is, that Germany will be laid
waste; such a carnage once begun, there will be
no ceasing until the destruction is complete. It is
easy to commence the battle, but beyond our
power to stop it. Madmen, what have those
children, women, and old men, done to you whom
you are hurrying to ruin with you, that you should
fill the country with blood and rapine, and make
so many widows and orphans ? Oh ! Satan is
rejoicing ! God has waxed into his most fearful
wrath, and threatens to let him loose upon us.
Beware, dear friends; all are involved. What
will it benefit you to damn yourselves gaily for
ever, and to leave behind you a land ensanguined
and desert ? Wherefore, my advice would be to
choose some counts and lords from the nobility,
and an equal number of councillors from the
towns, and to entrust them with the amicable
arrangement of the matters in dispute. You,
lords, if you will listen to me, will renounce that
outrageous pride of which you must at last divest
yourselves, and will relax your tyranny so that
the poor man also may enjoy a little ease. You,
peasants, you will give way on your side, and
will abandon some of your articles, which go too
far. On this wise, matters will not, indeed, be
treated according to the Gospel, but they will at
least be arranged conformably with human law.
" If you do not (which may God forfend !) follow
some such plan, I cannot hinder you from coming
into collision; but I shall be innocent of the loss of
your souls, of your blood, of your goods. Your
sins will lie at your own door. I have told you
this is no struggle of Christians with Christians, but
of tyrants and oppressors with robbers and profa-
ners of the name of the Gospel. Those who shall
perish will be everlastingly damned. For me, I
and mine will pray to God to reconcile you, and to
restrain you from proceeding to the extremes you
contemplate. Nevertheless, I cannot conceal from
you that the terrible signs which have been made
manifest in these latter times sadden my soul, and
fill me with fear lest God's wrath be too livelily
kindled, and he may exclaim, as in Jeremiah:
' Though these three men, Noah, Job, and Daniel,
were in it, they only shall be delivered, but the
land shall be desolate.' God grant that you may fear
his wrath, and amend, that the calamity may at
least be deferred ! Such are the counsels which,
my conscience bears me witness, I tender you as a
Christian and a brother; God grant they bring
forth fruit. Amen !"
The biographical character of this work, and the
limits within which we must restrict it, do not allow
us to enter into the history of this German jacqticrle.
(See, however, the Additions and Illustrations.) We
must be contented here with citing the sanguinary
proclamation issued by Dr. Thomas MUnzer, the
leader of the Thuringian peasants, which contrasts
strikingly with the mild and moderate tone obser-
vable in the twelve ai-ticles given above: —
" The true fear of God before all.
" Dear brethren — How long will you slumber ?
Will you for ever disobey God's will, because, in
your limited comprehension, you deem yourselves
abandoned I How often have I repeated my ex-
hortations ! God cannot longer reveal himself.
You must be firm; if not, sacinfice and griefs will all
A.D. 1523— ir(25.
MUNZER : HIS FATE.
liave been in vain. I forewarn you, your sufferings
will in such case, re-commence. We must either
suffer in God's cause, or become martyrs to the
devil. Be firm, then; give not way to fear or sloth ;
cease from flattering dreamers and impious wretches
who have wandered from the path. Arise, and
fight the Lord's fight. Time presses. Make your
brethren respect God's testimony; otherwise, all
will perish. Germany, France, Italy, are wholly
up in arms; the Master wishes to play his game; the
horn* of the evil-doers is come. At Fulda, dui'ing
Passion week, four churches of the bishopric were
sacked: the peasants of Klegen in Hegau, and
those of the Black Forest, have risen to the
number of three hundred thousand. Their mass
increases daily. All my fear is, that these silly
ones may be ensnared into some deceitful compact,
the disastrous consequences of which they cannot
foresee. Though you should be but three, yet,
confiding in God and seeking his honour and glory,
a hundred thousand enemies would not affright you.
Up, up, up ! (JDran, dran, dran !) 'Tis time; the
wicked tremble. Be without pity, though even
Esau should speak you fairly. (Gen. xxxiii.) Listen
not to the groans of the impious: they will suppli-
cate you most tenderly; they will weep like children;
be not moved by them ; God forbade Moses to be
so (Deut. vii.), and has made a revelation to us of
the same prohibition. Raise the towns and vil-
lages, above all, the miners of the mountains. . . .
Up, up, up, whilst the fire is heating; let not the
sword, warm with blood, have time to chill. Forge
Nimrod on the &xi\\\, pink pank. Slay all in the
tower; whilst they shall live, you will never be freed
from the fear of men. One cannot speak of God to
you, as long as they reign over you. Up, up,
up, whilst it is day. God goes before you; follow.
The whole of this history is described and explained
in St. Matthew, c. xxiv. Be not then afraid. God
is with you, as it is said, c. ii., paragraph 2. God
tells you to fear nothing. Fear not numbers. 'Tis
not your battle, 'tis the Lord's; 'tis not you who
fight. Be bold, and you will experience the power
of succours from on high. Amen. Given at Miil-
hausen, in 1525. Thomas Munzer, God's servant
against the wicked."
In a letter to the elector Frederick and duke
John, Luther draws a comparison between himself
and Miinzer. " As to me, I am only a poor man,
and began my undertaking with fear and trembling,
like St. Paul, as he himself confesses (1 Cor. ii.
3 — 6), he who, nevertheless, could boast of having
heard a heavenly voice. I hear not such voices,
and am not sustained by the Spirit. With what
humble and apologetic frame of mind did I not
begin to attack the pope ! What internal struggles
did I not go through ! What supplications did I
not address to God ! My first publication attests
this. Yet, with this poor spirit of mine, I have
done what this terrible world-cracking ( Weltfresscr-
f/eist,) spirit has not yet dared to attempt*. I have
held disputations at Leipzig, m the midst of a hos-
tile population. I have attended the summons of
ray greatest enemy to Augsburg. I have shown
myself at Worms, before Ctesar and the whole em-
pii-e, although well-aware that my safe-conduct was
broken through, that craft and treachery were on
* Munzer refused to dispute in any assembly, public or
private, which was unfavourable to him.
the watch for me. However weak and poor I then
was, my heart, notwithstanding, assured me that 1
behoved to enter Worms, although I should find
there as many devils as tiles on the roofs I have
been compelled, in my career, to meet in argument,
without remission, one, two, three, no matter how
many, and upon their own ground. Weak and
poor in mind, I have been necessitated to stay
by myself like the flower of the field ; I could
select neither adversary, nor hour, nor place,
nor mode of attack, nor distance to be observed,
but have been necessitated to hold myself ready
to answer the whole world, as the apostle teaches
(1 St. Peter, iii. 15). And this spirit who has
soared above us all as high as the sun above
the earth, this spirit who barely regards us
as insects and worms, requires an assembly of
such as are favourable to him, and from whom
he has nothing to fear, and refuses to reply to
two or three challengers who would question him
apart. The reason is, that we have no other
strength than that which Jesus Christ gives us ;
if he leave us to ourselves, the rustling of a leaf
will make us tremble ; if he support us, our spirit
is conscious within itself of the power and glory of
the Lord. I am forced to vaunt myself, foolish
though it be, and St. Paul was forced as well
{2Cor. xi. 16) ; but would willingly refrain, could I
do so in the presence of these lying spirits."
Immediately after the defeat of the peasants,
Melanchthon published a brief account of Miinzer,
of course, singularly unfavourable to the conquered.
He asserts, that Miinzer fled to Frankenhausen,
where he concealed himself in a bed, and feigned
to be sick, but was found out by a cavalier, and
recognized through his portfolio. " Whilst he was
being handcuffed, he kept crying out, and duke
Geoi-ge saying to him, ' You are in pain, Thomas ;
but those poor people who have been killed, pushed
on to their death by you, have suffered more to-
day;' ' They would not have it otherwise,' was his
reply, bursting out into laughter, as if possessed by
the devil. Miinzer confessed, on his examination,
that he had long thought of reforming Christen-
dom, and that the insurrection of the Suabian
peasants had struck him as a favourable opportu-
nity. He showed extreme pusillanimity in his last
moments, and was so bewldered, as to be unable
to repeat the Credo of himself. Duke Henry of
Brunswick repeated it, and he said it after him.
He also publicly confessed that he had acted erro-
neously. With regard to the princes, he exhorted
them to be less hard to the poor, and to read the books
of Kings, saying, that if they followed his advice,
they would never have similar dangers to fear. He
was then decapitated. His head was fixed upon
a pike, and remained exposed as an e.xample.
Before his execution, he wrote to the inhabitants
of Miilhausen, recommending his vfiie to them, and
praying them not to avenge themselves on her.
He added, that " before he quitted the world, he
thought it his duty earnestly to exhort them to dis-
continue the revolt, and avoid all fresh effusion of
blood."
Whatever may have been the atrocities that
sullied Miinzer and the peasants, one cannot but
be surprised at the severity with which Luther
speaks of their defeat. He could not pardon them,
for having compromised the name of Reformation.
" 0 wretched spirits of troubles, where are now
40
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1623-1525.
the words with which you excited and stirred up
poor people to revolt — when you said that they
were God's people, that God fought for them, that
any one of them could beat down a hundred ene-
mies, that with a hat they could kill five at a blow,
and that the stones fired from the arquebuss, in-
stead of striking those opposite, would turn, and
kill those who fired them ? Where now is Miinzer,
with that sleeve in which he boasted he could catch
all the missiles directed against his people ? What
is now that God, who for near a year has prophe-
sied by the mouth of Miinzer ? I am of opinion,
that all the peasants ought to perish, rather than
the princes and magistrates, since they take up
the sword without divine authority. The peasants
deserve no mercy, no tolerance, but the indignation
of God and man." (May 30th, 1525.) " The pea-
sants," he says elsewhere, " ai'e under the ban both
of God and the emperor, and may be treated as
mad dogs." In a letter dated the 21st of June, he
enumerates the horrible massacres committed upon
them by the nobles, without displaying the least
sign of interest or pity.
He showed more generosity towards his enemy
Carlstadt, who was, at the time, exposed to the
greatest dangers, and had infinite difficulty in
justifying himself for having taught doctrines akin
to those of Miinzer. He returned to Wittemberg,
and humbled himself before Luther, who interceded
for him, and obtained the elector's permission for
his settling as a husbandman at Kemberg, which he
desired to do. " I am grieved about the poor man ;
and your grace knows that we should have pity on
the unfortunate, especially when they are inno-
cent." (Sept. 12th, 1525.) On Nov. 22nd, 1626, he
again writes. ... " Doctor Carlstadt earnestly
prays me to intercede with your grace to allow him
to inhabit the city of Kemberg, as the malice of
the peasants renders living in a village irksome to
him. Now, as he has kept himself quiet up to the
present time, and as he will be under the eye of
the provost of Kemberg, I humbly beseech your
electoral grace to grant his request, although your
grace have already done much for him, and have
even drawn suspicion and calumnies on yourself on
his account. But so much the more abundantly will
God return it to you. 'Tis for him to think of the
safety of his soul — that is his concern; to treat him
well as regards his bodily wants, is ours."
" To all dear Christians into whose hands the
present writing shall fall, the grace and peace of God
our Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ; Doctor
Martin Luther. — Doctor Andi-eas Carlstadt has just
forwarded to me a small woi-k, in which he clears
himself of the charge of having been one of the lead-
ers of the rebels, and earnestly entreats me to get it
printed, in order to save the honour of his name, and,
perhaps, even his life, which is endangered through
the haste with which they will hurry through the
trial of the accused. Indeed it is reported that rapid
proceedings are about to be instituted against many
poor persons, and the innocent to be executed along
with the guilty, without hearing or proof, in the
wantonness of i-age ; and I much fear the cowardly
tyrants, who before trembled at the fall of a leaf,
waxing now so bold in glutting their rage, tliat, on
the destined day, God will cast them down in their
turn. Now, albeit doctor Carlstadt is my greatest
enemy on questions of doctrine, and there is no
hope of our agreeing on such points, the confidence
with which he applies to me; in his hour of fear,
rather than to those old friends of his who erst excit-
ed him against me, shall not be deceived, and I shall
gladly do him this service, and others, if possible."
Luther goes on to express his hopes that, by God's
grace, all will yet turn out well for Carlstadt, and
that he will at the last renounce his errors touching
the sacrament. At the same time, he defends him-
self against any charge that may be brought on
account of his conduct on this occasion, of his
yielding a jot on doctrinal points ; whilst to any
charge of excess of credulity, he replies, " That it
becomes neither him nor any one to judge another's
heart. ' Charity suffereth long,' says St. Paul ;
and, elsewhere, ' Charity believeth all things, hopeth
all things.' This, then, is my opinion. So long as
doctor Carlstadt off'ers to take his trial, and to un-
dergo fitting punishment should he be convicted of
having taken part in the rebellion, I am bound to
credit both his word and this writing of his, al-
though previously inclined to consider himself and
his friends animated with a seditious spirit, and am
bound to aid him to procure the inquiry which he
solicits."
Luther next proceeds to ascribe much of what
has happened, to the violence with which princes
and bishops have opposed the spread of religion.
" Hence that popular fury which, naturally, will
not be appeased until the tyrants be low in the
mud; since things cannot last when a master can
only inspire fear instead of love. No, let us leave
our black-coats and country squires to shut their
ears against warnings : let them go on, let them go
on; let them continue to accuse the Gospel of the
evil which they have brought upon themselves; let
them always say, ' What do I care for it V Soon
will there come Another, who will answer them,
' Yet a little while and there shall be nor prince
nor bishop on the face of the earth.' Let them,
then, alone; they will soon find what they have
been so long looking for; the thing is set a-going.
God grant they may yet repent in time! Amen.
Therefore, I beseech nobles and bishops, and every
one, to suffer doctor Carlstadt, on tliis solemn
allegation of his that he can clear himself from all
implication in the rebellion, to enter on his defence,
for fear of tempting God more, and of the people's
anger becoming more violent and justified. . . . He
has never lied. He who has promised to hearken to
the cries of the oppressed; and He wanteth not
power to punish. May God grant us his grace.
Amen." (a.d. 1525.) — " Germany, I fear me, is
lost. Perish she must, since the princes will only
employ the sword. Ah! they think that they can
thus pluck out, hair by hair, the good God's beard.
He will smite them on the cheek therefore." (a.d.
152fi.) — " The spirit of these tyrants is impotent,
cowardly, foreign from every honest thought.
They deserve to be the slaves of the people, lint,
by the grace of Christ, I am sufficiently avenged
in the contempt I entertain for them, and for Satan,
their god." (The end of December, 1525.)
A.D. 1524—1527.
HIS DISPUTE WITH ERASMUS.
41
CHAPTER IV.
A.D. 1524 — 1527.
LUTHER ATTACKED BY THE RATIOKALISTS. — ZWINGLE.
— BUCER, &C. — ERASMUS.
During the whole of this terrible tragedy of the
war of the peasants, the theological war was raging
against Luther. The Swiss and Rhenish reformers,
Zwingle, Bueer, CEcolampadius, participated in
Carlstadt's theological principles, differing from
him in little save in their submission to the civil
power. Not one of them would remain within the
limits to which Luther desired to restrict the
Reformation. Hard and frigid logicians, they
daily effaced the traces of that antique Christian
poesy which he sought to preserve. Less daring,
but more dangerous still, the king of the literary
world, the cold and ingenious Erasmus, rained
fearful blows upon him. Zwingle and Bucer*,
men of a political cast of mind, had long been
striving to preserve, at any price, the apparent
unity of Protestantism. Bucer, that grand architect
of subtleties (Bossuet), concealed his opinions for
some time from Luther, and even translated his
German works. " No one," says Luther, " no one
has translated my works into Latin more ably or
exactly than master Bucer. He foists into them
none of his vagaries touching the sacrament. Did
I seek to display my inmost heart and thought in
words, I could not do better." At another time, he
seems to have detected the infidelity of the transla-
tion. On September 13tli, 1527, he writes to a
printei', that Bucer, in translating his works into
Latin, had so altered certain passages as to pervert
the sense ; " it is on this fashion that we have made
the fathers heretics." And he begs him, should he
reprint the volume, to prefix a preface from him-
self, warning the reader of the changes introduced
by Bucer. In 1527, he published a work against
Zwingle and QEcolampadius, in which he styled
them new Wickliffites, and denounced their opinions
as sacrilegious and heretical. At length, in 1528,
he said, " 1 know enough, and more than enough,
of Bucer's iniquity to feel no surprise at his per-
verting against me my own published sentiments
on the sacrament Christ keep you, you who
are living in the midst of these ferocious beasts,
these vipers, lionesses, panthers, with almost more
danger than Daniel in the lions' den." " I believe
Zwingle to be worthy of a holy hate for his rash
and criminal handling of God's word." (October
27th, 1527.) "What a fellow is this Zwingle,
with his rank ignorance of grammar and dia-
lectics, not to speak of other sciences !" (November
28th, 1527.)
In a second publication against them, in 1528,
he says, " I reject, and condemn as mere error, all
doctrine which assumes the will to be free." This
was the subject of his grand quarrel with Erasmus;
which began in 1525, the year that Erasmus pub-
• The learned of the sixteenth century generally trans-
lated their proper names into Greek. So, Kuhhorn (Cow-
horn) changed his name into tliat of Bucer; Hausschein
(House-light) into fficolampadius ; Didier (from Desiderium,
desire) into Erasmus; Schwarz-Erde (Black-earth) into
Melanchthon, &c. Luther and Zwingle, the two popular
reformers, are the only ones who retained their own proper
appellations in the vulgar tongue.
lished his De Lihero Arbitrio. Up to that time, they
had been on friendly terras. Erasmus had frequently
stood forth in defence of Luther; and the latter, in
return, consented to respect the neutrality of
Erasmus. The following letter proves that down to
1524, Luther thought it expedient to observe some
delicacy towards liim: — " This has been a long
silence, dear Erasmus; and although I waited for
you, as my superior, to break it, charity now seems
to bid me make a commencement. I do not re-
proach you with having kept aloof from us through
fear of embarrassing the cause which you abetted
against our enemies, the papists; and, indeed, the
only annoyance I feel is your having harassed us with
some sharp stings and bites in various passages of
the works which you have published, to catch their
favour or mitigate their anger. We see that the
Lord has not yet granted you sufficient energy or
understanding to attack these monsters freely and
courageously, and we are not the men who would
exact from you what is above your strength. We
have respected in you your weakness, and the
measure of God's gifts. The whole world must
bear witness to your successful cultivation of that
literature by which we arrive at a true under-
standing of the Scriptures, and this gift of God's
has been magnificently and wonderfully displayed
in you; calling for all thanks. And so I have
never desired to see you quit the distance which
you keep, in order to enter our camp. Great,
doubtless, would be the services you could render
us by your talent and eloquence; but, since your
heart fails, better serve with what He has given
you. There was a fear that you might suffer
yourself to be led away by our adversaries to
attack our doctrine publicly, when I should feel
bound to oppose you to your face; and I have
quieted some of our friends who had written with
the design of forcing you into the arena: hence, I
should have been glad that the Hutten's Expostulatio,
and still more that thy Hutten^s Spo7ige had not been
published; a circumstance which may have taught
you to feel how easy it is to wx-ite about moderation,
and to accuse Luther of intemperance, but how
difficult and impossible to practise these lessons
except by a singular gift of grace. Believe it or
not, Christ is my witness that I pity you from the
bottom of my soul when I see such passions and
hates against you, to which it were too much
(weak and worldly as is your vii'tue to bear up
against such storms) to suppose you insensible.
Yet, perchance, our friends may be instigated by
a lawful zeal, deeming themselves unworthily
attacked by you. . . . For my own part, although
irritable and often hurried away by anger to write
bitterly, it has been in the case of the obstinate
only; being merciful and mild to sinners generally,
however insensate and iniquitous, as my conscience
bears me witness, and numbers can tell. And
thus I have restrained my pen, notwithstanding
your goadings, and have resolved to restrain it,
until you declare yourself openly. For what-
ever be our points of disagreement, and with
whatever impiety or dissimulation you express
your disapprobation or your doubts on the
most important pomts of religion, I neither can
nor will accuse you of obstinacy. What steps
take now ? On both sides there is exceeding ex-
asperation. Might I be mediator, I would have
them forbeax their furious attacks upon you, and
42
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.n. 1524— 1&27.
suffer your declining yeai's to sleep in peace in the
Lord ; and they would do so, did they take into
consideration your weakness and the greatness of
our cause, which has long exceeded your small
measure. We have advanced so far that we have
scant need to fear for our cause, even though
Erasmus should assemble all his forces against us.
. . . However, there is some show of reason in
our friends feeling so annoyed at your attacks ;
for it is only human weakness to fidget and alarm
itself about the name and authority of Erasmus.
To be bitten by Erasmus but once, is a very diffei'-
ent thing from being a prey to the attacks of all
the papists put together. I have written to you
thus, dear Erasmus, to prove my candour, and
because I yearn that the Lord may grant you
grace befitting your name. Should this be de-
layed, yet I pray you to remain at least a spectator
of our tragedy. Join not your forces to our ad-
versaries ; publish no books against me, and I will
publish none against you. As for those who com-
plain of being attacked in Luther's name, remem-
ber that they are men like you and me, to whom
we must grant indulgence and pardon, and that, as
St. Paul says, ' we must hear each other's burden.'
Biting is enough ; we must beware of devouring
one another. . . " (Api'il, 1524.)
To Borner. " Erasmus knows less about pre-
destination than even the sophists of the school.
Erasmus is not formidable on this, any more than
on any other Christian matter. I will not lunge at
Erasmus, and shall let liim lunge at me once or
twice, without parrying and returning the thrust.
It is not wise in him to be preparing the strength
of his eloquence against me I shall present
myself confidently before the most eloquent Eras-
mus, stammerer as I may be in comparison with
him, and caring not for his credit, his name, or his
reputation. I am not angi'y with Mosellanus's
attaching himself to Erasmus rather than me.
Tell him to he Erasmian with all his strength."
(iMay 28th, 1522.) This forbearance could not last.
The publication of the De Lihero Arbitrio was a
declaration of war. Luther perceived that the
true question was at last mooted. " What I
esteem, what I laud in thee is, that thou alone
hast touched the root of the subject, the whole
gist of the matter, I mean free will. Thou dost
not plague me with disputes foreign to the ques-
tion, with the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and
other fooleries with which they have paid me off.
Alone thou hast seized the knot, hast struck at the
throat. Thanks, Erasmus ! ... It is irreligious,
thou sayest, it is superfluous, a matter of pure
curiosity, to inquire whether God be endowed with
prescience, whether our will is operant as regards
everlasting salvation, or is only acted upon by
grace ; whether what good and evil we do, we do
actively or passively ! . . Great God ! what then is
religious, grave, useful I Erasmus, Erasmus, it is
difficult to accuse thee of ignorance ; a man of thy
years, living in the midst of Christian people, and
who has so long meditated upon the Scriptures !
It is impossible to excuse, or to think well of thee.
. . . What ! you, a theologian, you, a Christian
doctor, not satisfied to abide by your oi'dinary
scepticism, you to decide that those things are im-
necessary, without which there is no longer God,
nor Christ, nor Gospel, nor faith ; without which
there remains nothing, I will not say of Chris-
tianity, but of Judaism !" But all in vain is
Luther powerful and eloquent; he cannot break
asunder the bonds which entwine him. " Why,"
asks Erasmus, " does not God correct the viciousness
of our will, since it is not in our power to control
it ? or why does he impute it to us, since this
viciousness of will is inherent in man ? . . . . The
vessel says to the potter, ' Wherefore have you
made me for the everlasting fire V . . . If man be
not free, what is the meaning of precept, action,
reward, in short, of all language ? Why speak of
repentance, &c." Luther is exceedingly put to it
to answer all this. " God speaks to us on this
fashion," he says, " solely to convict us of our
powerlessness if we do not implore his assistance.
Satan said, ' Thou art free to act.' Moses said,
' Act ;' in order to convict us before Satan of our
mability to act." A cruel and seemingly silly
answer ; equivalent to tying our legs, and then
bidding us walk, and punishing us every time we
fall. Recoiling from the consequences which
Ei'asmus either deduces or hints at, Luther re-
jects every system of interpretation for the Scrip-
ture, and yet finds himself obliged to have recourse
to interpretation in order to escajjo the conclusions
of his adversary. For instance, he explains the
" / will harden Pharaoh's heart," as follows : " God
does evil in us, that is to say, through us, not
through any defect in himself, but through the
effect of our vices ; for we are sinners by nature,
whilst God can only do good. By virtue of his
omnipotence, he carries us along with him in his
course of action, but, although good itself, he can-
not prevent an evil instrument from producing
evil."
It must have been glorious for Erasmus to behold
the triumphant enemy of papacy wi'ithing under
his blows, and clutching to oppose him a weapon
so dangerous to him who employs it. The more
Luther struggles, the more he takes advantage;
the more he pushes his victoi'y, the deeper he sinks
into immorality and fatalism, even to being con-
strained to admit that Judas could do no other than
betray Christ. Deep and lasting, therefore, was
Luther's recollection of this quarrel. He did not
deceive himself with regard to his triumph : he had
not discovered the solution of the terrible problem ;
he felt this in his De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bon-
dage of the Will); and, to his latest day, the name
of him who had beaten him down to the most im-
moral consequences of the doctrine of grace, is
mixed up in his writings and sermons, with cui'ses
upon the blasphemei's of Christ.
He was, most of all, angered by Erasmus's ap-
parent moderation ; who, not daring to attack the
foundations of the edifice of Christianity, seemed
desirous of destroying it slowly, stone by stone.
This shifting and equivocation did not suit Luther's
energy. " Erasmus," he says, " that amphibolous
king, who sits quietly on the throne of amphibology,
mocks us with his ambiguous words, and claps his
hands when he sees us entangled in his insidious
figures, like a quarry in the nets. Taking it as an
opportunity for his rhetoric, he falls upon us with
loud cries, tearing, flogging, crucifying, throwing all
hell at our head, because, he says, we have imder-
stood in a slanderous, infamous, and Satanic sense,
woi'ds which he, nevertheless, wished to be so un-
derstood. . . . See him advance, creeping like a
viper, to tempt simple souls, like the serpent that
A.D. 152G— 1529.
HIS MARRIAGE.
43
beguiled Eve into doubt, and infused into her sus-
picion of God's commands." Wliatever Luther
may say, this dispute occasioned him so much
anxiety and trouble, that he at last declined battle,
and prevented his friends fi'om replying for him:
" If I fight with dirt, conqueror or conquered, I am
always defiled." " I would not," he writes to his
son John, " for a thousand florins find myself in
God's presence in the danger in which Jerome will
stand, still less in Erasmus's place. If I recover
health and strength I will fully and freely bear wit-
ness to my God against Erasmus. I will not sell
my dear little Jesus. I daily di-aw nearer to the
grave; and, before I descend into it, wish to bear
witness to my God with my lips, and without put-
ting forth a single leaf as my shield. As yet I have
hesitated, and have said to myself, ' Shouldst thou
kill him what would be his fate V I killed Miinzer,
and his death is a load round my neck. But I
killed him because he sought to kill my Christ."
Preaching on Trinity Sunday, doctor Martin Luther
says : " I pray all of you, who have seriously at
heart the honour of Christ and of the Gospel, to be
the enemies of Erasmus. , . ." One day, doctor
Luther exclaimed to doctoi's Jonas and Pomeranus,
with energetic earnestness: "My dying prayers
to you would be, ' Scourge this serpent.' . . . When
I shall recover, with God's aid, I will write against
him, and kill him. We have endui'ed his mockery
of us, and having taken us by the throat; but now,
that he seeks to do the same by Christ, we will
array ourselves against him. ... It is true, that
crushing Erasmus is crushing a bug ; but my Christ,
whom he mocks, is nearer to me than Erasmus's
being m dangei'." " If I live, I will, with God's
aid, purge the Church of his ordure. 'Tis Ei'asmus
who has given birth to Ci'otus, Egranus, Witzeln,
OUcolampadius, Campanus, and other visionaries or
Epicureans. Be it thoroughly understood, I will no
more recognize him as a member of the Church."
Looking one day at a portrait of Erasmus, Luther
said : " Erasmus, as his countenance proves, is a
crafty, designing man, who has laughed at God and
reHgion;he uses fine words, as, ' dear Lord Christ,
the word of salvation, the holy sacraments,' but
holds the truth to be a matter of indifference.
When he preaches, it rings false, like a cracked
pot. He has attacked the papacy, and is now draw-
ing his head out of the noose."
CHAPTER V.
A.D. 1526 — 1529.
Luther's marriage. — his poverty, discouragement,
despair, sickness. — belief in the approaching
end op the world.
The firmest souls would have found it difficult to
bear up against such a succession of shocks ; and
Luther's visibly failed after the cri.sis of the year
1525. His part had been changed, and most dis-
tressingly. Erasmus's opposition was the signal
for the estrangement of men of letters, who, at the
first, had so powerfully aided Luther's cause. He
had allowed the De Lihero Arbitrio to remain
without any serious reply. The great innovator,
the people's champion against Rome, saw himself
outstripped by the people, and, in the war of the
peasants, cursed by the people ; so that one cannot
be surprised at the discouragement which over-
whelmed him at this period. In this prostration of
his mind, the flesh i-egained its empire ; he married.
The two or three succeeding years are a sort of
eclipse for Luther ; in which we find him for the
most part preoccupied with worldly cares, that
cannot, however, fill up the void he experiences.
At last, he succumbs. A gi-and physical crisis
marks the end of this period of atony. He is
aroused from his lethargy by the dangers that
threaten Germany ; which is invaded by Soliman
(a.d. 1529), and threatened in its liberty and its
faith at the diet of Augsburg, by Charles the Fifth
(a.d. 1530.)
" Since God has created woman such as to re-
quire of necessity to be near man, let us ask no
more, God is on our side. So, let us honour mar-
riage, as an honourable and divine institution. This
mode of life is the first which it pleased God to
ordain, is that which he has constantly maintained,
is the last which he will glorify over every other.
Where were kingdoms and empires when Adam
and the patriarchs lived in marriage ? Out of
what other kind of life do all states proceed ?
Albeit, man's wickedness has compelled the ma-
gistracy to usurp it for the most part, so that mar-
riage has become an empire of war, whilst, in its
purity and simplicity it is the empire of peace."
(Jan. 17th, 1525.) " You tell me, my dear Spala^
tin, that you wish to renounce the court, and your
office. My advice to you is, to remain, except you
leave to marry. For my part, I am in God's hand,
a being whose heart he can change and change
back, whom he can slay, or call to life, at each mo-
ment, and at every hour. Nevertheless, in the
state in which my heart has ever been, and still
is, I shall not take a wife : not that I do not feel
my flesh and my sex ; I am neither wood nor
stone, but my mind inclines not to marriage whilst
I am daily expecting the heretic's death and pu-
nishnient." (Nov. 30th, 1524.) " You need not be
surprised that I, qui sic famosus sum amator (who
am so notorious a lover), do not marry. You
should rather be surprised that I, who have written
so much upon marriage, and have constantly had
so much to do with women, have not long since
been changed into a woman rather than marrying
one. Still, if you will regulate yourself by my
example, it should be all-powerful with you to learn
that I have had three spouses at the same time,
and have loved them so much as to lose two, who
are about to take other husbands. The third, I
hardly detain by the left-hand, and she is slipping
from me." (April 16th, 1525.)
To Amsdorff. " Hoping to have my life spared
for some time yet, 1 have not liked to refuse
giving my father the hope of posterity. Besides,
I have chosen to practise what I have preached,
since so many others have shown themselves afraid
to practise what is so clearly announced in the
Gospel. I follow God's will ; and am not devoured
with a burning, immoderate love for my wife, but
simply love her." (June 21st, 1525.)
His bride, Catherine von Bora, was a young girl
of noble birth, who had escaped from her convent ;
was twenty-four years of age, and remarkably beau-
tiful. It appears that she had been previously
attached to a young student of Nuremberg, Jerome
44
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. I52B— 1529.
Baumgartner; and Luther wrote to him (Oct. 12th,
1524). — " If you desii'e to obtain your Catherine von
Bora, make haste before she is given to another,
whose she almost is. Still, she has not yet over-
come her love for you. For my part, I should be
delighted to see you united." He wi'ites to Stiefel,
a year after his marriage. (Aug. 12th, 1526).
" Catherine, my dear rib, salutes you. She is,
thanks to God, in the enjoyment of excellent health.
She is gentle, obedient, and complying in all things,
beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my
poverty for the wealth of Crcesus." Luther, in
truth, was at this time extremely poor. Pre-
occupied with household cares, and anxiety about
his future family, he turned his thoughts to ac-
quiring a handici'aft. " If the world will no longer
support us in return for preaching the word, let
us learn to live by the labour of our own hands."
Could he have chosen, he would no doubt have
preferred one of the arts which he loved — the art
of Albert Durer,andof his friend Lucas Cranach —
or music, which he called a science inferior to
theology alone ; but he had no master. So he
became turner. " Since our barbarians here know
nothing of art or science, my servant Wolfgang and
I have taken to turning." HeconimissiunedW-en-
ceslaus Link to buy him tools at Nurembei'g. He
also took to gardening and building. " I have
planted a garden," he writes to Spalatin, "and
liave built a fountain, and have succeeded tolerably
in both. Come, and be crowned with lilies and
roses." (Dec. 1525.) In April, 1527, on being
made a present of a clock by an abbot of Nurem-
berg, " I must," he says, in acknowledging its re-
ceipt, " I must become a student of mathematics
iu order to comprehend all this mechanism, for I
never saw anything like it." A mouth afterwards
he writes, " The turning tools ai-e come to hand,
and the dial with the cylinder and the wooden
clock. I have tools enough for the present, except
you meet with some newly-invented ones, which
can turn of themselves, whilst my servant snores or
stares at the clouds. I have already taken my
degree in clockmaking, which is prized by me as
enabling me to tell the hour to ray drunkards of
Saxons, who pay more attention to their glasses
than the hours, and care not whether sun, or clock,
or whoso regulates the clock, go wrong." (May
19th, 1527.) " You may absolutely see my melons,
gourds, and pumpkins grow ; so I have known how
to ehiploy the seeds you have sent me." (July 5th.)
Gardening was no gi-eat resource, and Luther
found himself in a situation equally strange and
distressing. This man, who governed kings, saw
himself dependent on the elector for his daily food,
"lie new church had only compassed her deliver-
ance from the papacy, by subjecting herself to the
civil power, which, at the outset, starved and neg-
lected her. Luther had written to Spalatin in 1523,
that he desired to resign the income which he
drew from his convent, into the elector's hands.
..." Since we read no more, bawl no more, say
mass no more, and, indeed, do nothing for which
the house was founded, we can no longer live on
this money which is no longer oui's." (Nov. 1523.)
" As yet, Staupitz has paid no fraction of our in-
come. . . . We are daily plunging deeper into
debt ; and I know not whether to apply to the
elector again, or to let things go on, and the worst
come to the worst, until want drives me forth from
Wittemberg into the tender hands of pope and
emperor." (Nov. 1523.) " Are we here to pay
every one, and yet no one to pay us ? This is
passing strange." (Feb. 1st. 1524.) "Each day
burdens me with fresh debts ; I must seek alms by
some other means." (April 24th, 1524.) "This
life cannot last. Are not these delays of the prince
justly calculated to arouse suspicion ? For my
own part, I would long since have left my convent
for some other abode, and have lived by my own
labour (although I cannot now be said to live with-
out labour), had I not feared to bring scandal on
the Gospel, and even on the prince." (End of Dec.
1524.)
" You ask me for eight floruis; but where shall
I get them ? You know that I am obliged to use
the strictest economy; and I have imprudently con-
tracted debts this year to the amount of above a
hundred florins. I have been forced to leave three
goblets in pledge for fifty florins. It is true, that
my Lord, who has thus punished me for my impro-
vidence, has at last set me free. . . . Besides,
Lucas and Christian will no longer take my security,
finding that they either lose all, or else drain my
purse to the bottom." (Feb. 2nd, 1527.) "Tell
Nicolas Endrissus to ask me for some copies of my
works. Although very poor, I have yet made cer-
tain stipulations with my printers, asking them
nothing for all my labour, except the power of taking
occasionally a copy of my works. This is not ex-
acting, I think, since other writers, even transla-
tors, receive a ducat a sheet." (July 5th, 1527.)
" What has happened, my dear Spalatin, that you
write to me in so threatening and imperious a tone ?
Has not Jonas experienced enough of your con-
tempt and your prince's, that you still rage so
furiously against that excellent man ? I knov/ the
prince's character, and how lightly he treats men.
.... 'Tis thus, then, that the Gospel is honoured,
by i-efusing a poor stipend to its ministers ! . . . .
Is it not iniquitous and detestably pei-fidious to
order him to leave, and yet to manage to make it
appear that no such order had been given him 1
And think you that Christ does not note the stra-
tagem ? . . . I do not conceive, however, that the
prince has sustained any injury through us. . . A
tolerable proportion of the good things of this world
has found its way into his purse, and each day is
adding to it. God will find the means of feeding
us, if you withhold your alms and some accursed
money. . . Dear Spalatin, treat us, I pray you, us,
Christ's poor and exiles, more gently, or else ex-
plain yourself frankly, so that we may know what
we are about, and no longer be foi'ced to ruin our-
selves by following an equivocal order, which,
whilst it obliges us to leave, does not allow of our
naming those who compel us to the step." (Nov.
27th, 1524.) — " We have been gratified, my dear
Gerard Lampadarius, by the receipt of the letter
and the cloth, which you have sent us with such
candour of soul and benevolence of heart. . . .
Catherine and myself use your lamps every night,
and we reprove each other with having made you
no present, and having nothing to send you to keep
us in your recollection. I feel much shame at not
having made you a present of paper even, though
easy for me so to do. . . . Ere lofig I will send
you a bundle of books, at the least. I would have
forwarded to you, by this same conveyance, a Ger-
man Isaiah, which has just seen the light, but I
A.D. 1526—1529.
MENTAL AND BODILY INDISPOSITION.
45
have been stripped of every copy, so that I have
not one left." (Oct. 14th, 1528.)
To Martin Gorl'itz, who had made him a present
of beer: — " Your Ceres of Torgau has been happily
and gloriously consumed. It had been reserved for
myself and for visitors, who were never weary of
pi'aising it above all they had ever tasted. Like a
true boor, I have not yet sufficiently thanked your
Emilia and you for it. I am so cai-eless a house-
keeper (oiKo5£(T7r6rj;c) that I had utterly forgotten
it was in my cellar, until reminded by my servant
of it. Remember me to all our brethren, and,
above all, to your Emilia and her son, the graceful
hind and the young fawn. May the Lord bless you,
and make you multiply by thousands, both accord-
ing to the spirit and the flesh." (Jan. 15th, 1529.)
Luther writes to AmsdorfF, that he is about to ex-
tend his hospitality to a young wife: — " If my
Catherine should be brought to bed at the same
time, thou wouldst be the poorer for it. Gird thee,
then, not with sword and cuirass, but with gold
and silver and a good purse, for I will not let thee
off without a present." (March 29th, 1529.)— 2b
Jonas: — '' I had got to the tenth line of this letter
when tliey came to tell me that my Kate had given
me a girl: ' All glory and praise to our Father who
is in heaven /' My little John is safe. Augustin's
wife is doing well; and, lastly, Margaret Mochinn
has escaped death, contrary to all expectation. By
way of set-off, we have lost five pigs. . . . May
the plague be satisfied with this contribution ! I am,
as heretofore, an apostle truly, ' as dying, and beliold,
we live!'''" Luther's wife was pregnant; his son ill,
cutting his teeth; his two women-servants (Hannah
and Mai'garet Mochinn) had been attacked by the
plague, which was raging at the time at Wittem-
berg. He writes to Amsdorff: " My house is turned
into a hospital." (Nov. 1st, 152?.) "The wife of
Georges, the chaplain, is dead of a miscarriage and
the plague. . . . Every one is seized with terror.
I have taken the curate and his family into my
house." (Nov. 4th, 1527.) " Your little John does
not salute you, for he is ill, but begs your prayers.
He has not touched food for these twelve days. It
is marvellous to see how the child would fain be
gay and cheerful as usual, but is too weak for the
effort. The chirurgeon opened Margaret Mochinn's
abscess yesterday, and she is beginning to recover.
I have given her our winter apartment; we occupy
the large front parlour; Hanschen is in my room,
with the stove ; and Augustin's wife in hers. We
are beginning to hope that the plague has run its
course. Adieu. Embrace your daughter and her
mother for us, and remember us in your prayers."
(Nov. 10th, 1527.)
" My poor son was dead, but has been resuscita-
ted. He had not eaten for twelve days. The
Lord has increased my family by a little girl. We
are all well, save Luther himself, who, sound in
body and utterly isolated from the world, suffers
inwardly from the attacks of the devil and his
angels. I am wi-iting for the second and last
time against the Sacramentarians and their vain
words, &c." (December 31st, 1527.) " My little
daughter Elizabeth is dead. I am surprised how
sick she has left me at heart; a woman's heart, so
shaken I am. I could not have believed that a
father's soul would have been so tender towards
his child." (August 6th, 1528.) " I can teach you
what it is to be a father, especially of one of that
sex which has the power of awakening your softest
emotions beyond the reach of sons {prcesertim sexus
qui ultra filiorum castim etiam habet misericordiam
valde moventem)." (June 5th, 1530.)
Towards the close of the year 1527, Luther
himself was frequently seriously indisposed both
in body and mind. Writing to Melanchthon,
October 27th, he concludes his letter as follows: —
" I have not yet read Erasmus's new work, and
what should I read, I, a sick servant of Jesus
Christ's, I, who am scarcely alive ? What can I
do ? What write ? Is it God's will thus to over-
whelm me with all ocean's waves at once ? And
it is they who ought to have compassion on me
who come to give me the final blow after so many
sufferings! May God enlighten them and their
hearts! Amen." Two of Luther's intimate friends,
doctors John Bugenhagen and Jonas, have left us
the following account of a fainting fit with which
Luther was seized about the end of 1527: — "On
the Saturday of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary
(a.d. 1527), in the afternoon, doctor Luther com-
plained of pains in the head and such inexpressibly
violent humming in his ears, that he thought he
must sink under it. In the course of the morning,
he sent for doctor Bugenhagen to confess him;
when he spoke to him with affright of the tempta-
tions he had been going through, begged him to
strengthen him, and to pray to God for him, and
concluded by saying, ' Because I sometimes wear a
gay and jovial air, many conclude that my path is
on roses; and God knows how far my heai't is from
any such feeling. Often have I resolved, for the
world's sake, to assume a moi'e austere and holier
demeanour (I do not explain myself well), but God
has not favoured my resolve.' In the afternoon of
the same day he fell down senseless, turned quite
cold, and gave no sign of life. When recalled to
himself by unceasing cai'e, he began to pray with
great fervour: — ' Thou knowest, my God!' he said,
' how cheerfully I would have poured out my blood
for thy word, but thou hast willed it otherwise.
Thy will be done! No doubt, I was unworthy of it.
Death would be my happiness; yet, 0 my God! if
it be thy will, gladly would I still live to spread
thy holy word, and comfort such of thy people as
wax faint. Nevertheless, if my hour be come, thy
will be done ! In thy hands ai'e life and death. 0
my Lord Jesus Christ, I thank thee for thy grace
in suffering me to know thy holy name. Thou
knowest that I believe in thee, in the Father, and
in the Holy Ghost; thou art my divine Mediator
and Saviour. . . . Thou knowest, 0 my Lord, that
Satan has laid numerous snares for me, to slay my
body by tyrants and my soul by his fery arrows,
his infernal temptations. Up to this time, thou
hast marvellously protected me against all his
fury. Protect me still, 0 my steadfast Lord, if it
be thy will!'
" Then he turned to us both (Bugenhagen and
Jonas), and said, ' The world is prone to lying, and
there will be many who will say that I retracted
before I died. I call on you, therefore, at once to
receive my profession of faith. I conscientiously
declare that I have taught the true word of God,
even as the Lord laid upon me and impelled me
to do. Yea ; I declare that what I have preached
upon faith, charity, the cross, the holy sacrament,
and other articles of the Christian doctrine, is
just, good, and conducive to salvation. I have
46
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1526—1529.
been often accused of violence and harshness ; I
acknowledge that I have sometimes been violent
and harsh towards my enemies. Yet have I never
sought to injure any one, still less the perdition of
any soul. I had intended to write upon baptism,
and against Zwingle ; but God, apparently, has
willed the contrary.' He next spoke of the sects
that will ai-ise to pervert God's word, and will not
spare, he said, the flock which the Lord has re-
deemed with his blood. He wept as he spoke of
these things. 'As yet;' he said, ' God has suf-
fered me to join you in the struggle against these
spirits of disorder, and I would gladly continue so
to do ; alone, you will be too weak against them
all. However, the thought of Jesus Christ re-as-
sures me ; for he is stronger than Satan and all
his arms ; he is the Lord of Satan.' Some short
time after, when the vital heat had been a little
revived by frictions, and the application of hot
pillows, he asked his wife, 'Where is my little
heart, my well-beloved little John?' When the
child was brought, he smiled at his father, %vho
began saying, with tears in his eyes, ' Poor dear
little one, I commend you to God, you and your
good mother, my dear Catherine. You are penni-
less, but God will take care of you. He is the
father of orphans and widows. Preserve them, O
my God; inform them, even as thou hast preserved
and informed me up to this day.' He then spoke
to his wife about some silver goblets. 'Thou
knowest,' he added, ' they are all we have left.'
He fell into a deep sleep, which recruited his
strength ; and on the next day, he was consider-
ably better. He then said to doctor Jonas, ' Never
shall I forget yesterday. The Lord takes man into
hell, and draws him out of it. The tempest which
beat yesterday morning on my soul, was much
more terrible than that which ray body underwent
towards evening. God kills, and brings to life.
He is the master of life and death.' "
" For nearly three months, I have been growuig
weaker, not in body, but in mind ; to such a de-
free, that I can scarcely write these few lines,
'his is Satan's doing." (Oct. 8th, 1527.) " I want
to reply to the Sacramentarians, but shall be able
to do nothing except my soul be fortified." (Nov.
1st, 1527.) " I have not yet read Erasmus, or the
Sacramentarians, with the exception of some three
sheets of Zwingle. It is well done of them to
trample me so mercilessly under foot, so that I
may say with Jesus Christ, ' He persecuted the poor
and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in
heart.'' I alone bear the weight of God's wrath,
because I have sinned towards him. The pope
and Caesar, the princes, the bishops, the whole
world, hates and assails, but yet 'tis not enough
without my very brother come to torment me.
My sins, death, Satan and his angels, rage inces-
santly against me. And who would keep or com-
fort me if Christ were to desert me ; for whose
sake I have incurred their hate ? But he will not
desert the wretched sinner when the end cometh ;
for I think I shall be the last of all men. Oh !
would to God that Erasmus and the Sacramenta-
rians were to undergo for a quarter of an hour
only the misery of my heart 1" (Nov. 10th, 1527.)
" Satan tries me with marvellous temptations, but
I am not left without the prayers of the saints,
albeit the wounds of my heart are not easy to cure.
My comfort is, that there are many others who
have to sustain the same struggles. No doubt,
there is no suffering so great that my sins do not
deserve it. But what gives me life and strength is,
the consciousness that I have taught, to the salva-
tion of many, the true and pure word of Christ.
This it is which burns up Satan, who would wish to
see me and the word drowned and lost. And so I
suffer nothing at the hands of the tyrants of this
world, while others are killed, burnt, and die for
Christ ; but I have so much the more to suffer
spirituallj' from the prince of this world." (August
2lst, 1527.) " When I wish to write, my head is
filled as it were with tinklings, thunders, and if I
did not stop at once, I should faint outright. I
have now been three days, unable even to look
at a letter. My head is wearing into a small
chapter ; and if this goes on, it will soon be no
more than a paragraph, a period {caput meum fac-
tum est capltidum, perget i^erb fietque paragraphus,
tandem periodus). The day I received your letter
from Nurembei'g, Satan visited me. 1 was alone.
Vitus and Cyriacus had left me. This time he
was the stronger. He drove me out of my bed,
and forced me to go and seek the face of men."
(May 12, 1530). " Although well in bodily health,
I am ever ill with Satan's persecutions ; which
hinder me from writing or doing anything. The
last day, I fully believe, is not far from us. Fare-
well, cease not to pray for poor Luther." (Feb. 28th,
1529). " One may overcome the temptations
of the flesh, but how hard it is to struggle against
the temptation of blasphemy and despair. We
neither comprehend the sin, nor know the re-
medy." After a week of constant suffering, he
wrote : " Having all but lost my Christ, I was
beaten by the waves and tempests of despair and
blasphemy." (Aug. 2nd, 1527.)
Luther, far from receiving support and comfort
from his friends, whilst undergoing these internal
troubles, saw some lukewarm and timidly sceptical,
others fairly embarked in the path of mysticism
which he had himself opened up for them, and wan-
dering further from him daily. The first to declare
himself was Agricola, the leader of the Antinomians.
We shall hereafter see how Luther's last days were
embittered by his controversy with so dear a
friend. " Some one has been telling me a tale of
you, my dear Agricola, and with such urgency
that I promised him to write and make inquii-y of
you. The tale is, that you are beginning to ad-
vance the doctrine of faith without works, and
that you profess yourself ready to maintain this
novelty against all and smidry, with a gi-and
magazine of Greek words and rhetorical artifices.
"". . . I warn you to be on your guard against the
snares of Satan. . . . Never did event come more
unexpectedly upon me than the fall of (Ecolam-
padius and of Regius. And what have I not now
to fear for those who have been my intimate
friends ! It is not sui'prising that I should trem-
ble for you also, whom I would not see separated
in opinion from me for aught that the world can
bestow." (Sept. 11th, 1528.) " Wherefore should I
be provoked with the papists ? They make open
war upon me. We are declared enemies. But
they who do me most evil are my dearest children,
fraterculi met, aurei amiculi met ; they who, if Luther
had not written, would know nothing of Christ and
the Gospel, and would never have thrown off the
papal yoke ; at least, who, if they had had the
A.D. 1529—1532.
INVASION OF THE TURKS.
47
power, would have lacked the courage. I thought
that I had by this time suffered and exhausted
every calamity ; but my Absalom, the child of my
lieai't, had not yet deserted his father, had not yet
covered David with shame. My Judas, the terror
of the disciples of Christ, the traitor who delivered
up his master, had not yet sold nie : and now all
this has befallen me.
" A clandestine, but most dangerous pei'secution
is now going on against us. Our ministry is
despised. We ourselves are hated, persecuted,
and suffered to die of hunger. See what is now
the fate of God's word. When offered to those
who stand in need of it, they will not receive it. . .
Christ would not have been crucified, had he left
Jerusalem. But the prophet will not die out of
Jerusalem, and yet it is only in his own country
that the prophet is without honour. It is the
same with us. . . . It will soon come to pass that
the great of this duchy will have emptied it of minis-
ters of the word ; who will be driven from it by
hunger, not to mention other wi-ongs." (Oct. 18th,
1531.)
" There is nothing certain with regard to the
apparitions about which so much noise has been
made in Bohemia : many deny the fact. But
as to the gulfs which opened here, before my own
eyes, the Sunday after Epiphany, at eight o'clock
in the evening, it is a certainty, and has been
noticed in many places as far as the sea-coast.
Moreover, in December, doctor Hess writes me
word, the heavens were seen in flames above the
church of Breslaw ; and another day, he adds,
two beams were in flames, and a tower of fire
between. These signs, if I mistake not, announce
the last day. The empire is falling, kings are
falling, priests are falling, and the whole world
totters ; just as small fissures announce the ap-
proaching fall of a large house. Nor will it be
long before this happen, unless the Turk, as
Ezekiel prophesies of Gog and Magog, lose himself
in his victory and his pride, with the pope, his
ally." (March 7, 1529.) " Grace and peace iu our
Lord Jesus Christ. The world liastens to its end,
and I often think that the day of judgment may
well overtake me before I have finished my trans-
lation of the Holy Scriptures. All temporal things
predicted there are being fulfilled. The Roman
empire inclines to its ruin, the Turk has reached
the height of his power, the splendour of the
papacy suffers eclipse, the world is cracking in
every corner, as if about to crumble to pieces.
The empire, I grant, lias recovered a little under
our emperor Charles, but -'tis, perhaps, for the
last time ; may it not be like the light which, the
moment before it goes out for ever, emits a livelier
flash. . . . The Turk is about to fall upon us.
IMark me ; he is a reformer sent in God's wrath."
(March 15th.)
" There is a man with me, just come from
Venice, who asserts that the doge's son is at the
court of the Turk : so that we have been only
fighting against the latter until i>ope, Venetians,
and French openly and impudently turn Turks.
The same man states that there were eight hun-
dred Turlvs in the army of the Frenchmen at
Pavia ; three hundred of whom, sick of the war,
have returned safe and sound to their own country.
As you have not mentioned these montrosities to
me, I conclude you to be ignorant of them ; but
they have been told me both by letters and personal
informants, with details which do not allow me to
doubt of their truth. The hour of midnight ap-
proaches, when we shall hear the cry, ' The bride-
p'oom Cometh, <jo ye out to met-t him.' " (May 6th,
1529.)
BOOK THE THIRD.
A.D. 1529—1546.
CHAPTER I.
A.D. 1529— 1532.
THE TURKS. — DANGER OF GERMANY. — AUGSBURG, SMAL-
KALDE. — DANGER OP PROTESTANTISM.
Luther was roused from his dejection, and restored
to active life, by the dangers which threatened the
Reformation and Germany. When that scoxirge of
God, whose coming he awaited with resignation,
as the sign of the judgment, burst in reality on
Germany, when the Turks encamped before Vi-
enna, Luther changed his mind, called on the
people to take up arms, and published a book
against the Turks, which he dedicated to the land-
grave of Hesse, On the 9th of October, 1528, he
wrote to this prince, explaining to him the motives
which had induced him to compose it : — " I can-
not," he says, " keep my peace. There are, un-
fortunately, preachers among us who exhort the
people to pay no attention to the invasion of the
Turks ; aud there are some extravagant 'enough to
assert that Christians ar6 forbidden to liave re-
course to temporal arms under any circumstances.
Others, again, who regard the Germans as a nation
of incorrigible brutes, go so far as to hope they may
fall under the power of the Turks. These mad and
criminal notions are imputed to Luther and the
Gospel, just as, three years since, the revolt of the
peasants was, and as, in fact, every ill which befalls
the world invariably is; so that I feel it incumbent
on me to write upon the subject, as well to confound
calumniators, as to enlighten innocent consciences
on the course to be pursued against the Turks.
. . ." " We heard yesterday tliat, by God's mu-a-
culous grace, the Turk has left Vienna for Hungary.
For, after having been repulsed in his twentieth
assault, he sprang a mine, wliicli opened a breach
in three places, but nothing could induce his army
to renew the attack. God had struck a panic into
48
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1529—1532.
it, and his soldiers preferred falling by the hands
of their chiefs to advancing to another assault.
Some believe that he has drawn off his forces
through fear of bombards and our future army ;
others think otherwise. God manifestly has fought
for us this year. The Turk has lost twenty-six
thousand men ; three thousand of ours have fallen
in sorties. I have written this news to you, in order
that we may offer up thanks and pi-ayer together;
for the Turk, now that he is our neighbour, will
not leave us for ever in peace." (Oct. 27th, 1529.)
Germany was saved, but German Protestantism
was only the more endangered. Tlie exasperation
of the two parties had been brought to a climax, by
a circumstance which occurred prior to Solyman's
invasion. To believe Luther's Roman Catholic bio-
grapher, Cochlreus, whom we have before quoted,
duke George's chancellor. Otto Pack, feigned that
the Roman Catholic prhices had formed a league
against the elector of Saxony and the landgrave of
Hesse, and showed forged documents with the
duke's seal to them, to the landgrave, who, be-
lieving himself to be menaced, levied an army, and
entered into close alliance with the elector. The
Catholics, and, above all, duke George, vehemently
repelled the charge of having ever thought of
menacing the religious independence of the Luthe-
ran princes, and disavowed the chancellor, wlio,
perhaps, had only been guilty of divulging the
secret designs of his master. "Doctor Pack, in
my opinion a voluntary prisoner of the landgi'ave's,
has hitherto boi'ne the blame of having got up this
alliance of the princes. He asserts that he can
rebut the charge, and clear himself with honour ;
and may God gi'ant this plot to rebound on the
head of the clown whom I believe to be its author,
on that of our grand adversary ; you know whom
I mean, duke George of Saxony." (July 14th,
1528.) " You see the troubles this league of wicked
princes, which they deny however, has stirred up.
For my part, I look upon duke George's cold ex-
cuse as a confession. God will confound this mad-
headed fool ; this Moab, who exalts his pride above
his strength. We will lift up our voice in prayer
against these homicides ; enough indulgence has
been shown. And, if they are still plotting, we
will first invoke God, then summon the princes to
destroy them without pity."
Although all the princes had declared the docu-
ments to be forgeries, the bishops of Mentz, Bam-
berg, &c., were called upon to pay a hundred
thousand crowns of gold, by way of indemnity for
the armaments which the Lutheran princes had
prepared ; and who, indeed, asked no better than
to begin war. They had computed, and they felt
their strength. The grand-master of the Teutonic
order had secularised Prussia ; and the dukes of
Mecklenburg and of Brunswick, encouraged by
this great event, had invited Lutheran preachers.
(a.d. 1525.) The Reformation prevailed over the
north of Germany. In Switzerland, and on the
Rhine, the Zwinglians, who increased daily in num-
bers, were seeking to identify themselves with
Luther. Finally, on the south and the east, the
Turks, masters of Buda and of Hungary, constantly
menaced Austria, and held the emperor in check.
In default of the latter, duke George of Saxony,
and the powerful bishops of the north, had con.sti-
tuted themselves the opponents of the Reformation.
A violent controversial war had long been going
on between this prince and Luther. The duke
wrote to the latter: — " Thou fearest our having to
do with hypocrites; the present letter will show thee
how far this is the case, in which, if thou findest us
dissemble, thou mayest speak as ill of us as thou
likest; if not, thou must look for hypocrites there,
where thou art called a proidiet, a Daniel, the apostle
of Germany, the evangelist. . . . Thou imaginest,
perchance, that thou art sent of God to us, like
those prophets whom God commissioned to convert
princes and the powerful. Moses was sent to
Pharaoh ; Samuel to Saul ; Nathan to David ;
Isaiah to Hezekiah ; St. John the Baptist to Herod,
as we well know. But, amongst all these prophets,
we do not find a single apostate. They were consis-
tent in doctrine, sincere and pious men, free from
pride and avarice, and friends of chastity. . . . We
reck little of thy prayers, or of those of thy asso-
ciates. We know that God hates the assembly of
thy apostates. . . . God punished Miinzer for his
perversity, through us. He may well visit Luther
likewise ; nor shall we refuse to be in this, too, his
unworthy instrument. . . . No, Luther, rather re-
turn thyself, and be no longer led astray by the
spirit which seduced the apostate Sergius. The
Christian church closes not her bosom against the
repentant sinner. ... If it be pride which has
lost thee, consider that haughty Manichean, St.
Augustin, thy master, whose rule thou hast sworn
to observe : return, like him ; return to thy fidelity
and thy oaths ; be, like him, a light to Christen-
dom. . . . Such are our counsels to thee for the
new year. Conform to them, thou wilt be eternally
rewarded by God, and we will do our utmost to
obtain thy pardon from the emperor." (Dec. 28th,
1525.)
Luther's Protest against duke George, who had
intercepted one of his letters, 1529: — "As to the
fine names duke George showers on me — wretch,
criminal, perjurer, I cannot but thank him. They
are the emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, with which
I ought to be adorned by princes in return for
the honour and power which temporal authority
receives from the restoriition of the Gospel
Would not one say that duke George knows no
superior ? ' I, squire of squires,' he says, ' am
alone master and prince, am above all the princes
in Germany, am above the empire, its laws and
customs. I am the one to be feared, the one to
be obeyed; my will is law, despite what all others
may think or say.' Where, friends, will the pride
of this Moab stop ? There is only now left for
him to scale heaven, to spy and punish letters and
thoughts even in the sanctuary of God himself.
See our little prince; and withal, he will be glori-
fied, respected, adored ! Mighty well, gramercy."
In 1529, the year of the treaty of Cambrai and
of the siege of Vienna by Solyman, the empei-or
convened a diet at Spire (March 15th), where it
was settled that the states of the empire were to
continue to obey the decree launched against
Luther in 1524, and that every innovation was to
remain interdicted until the convocation of a
general council. It was on this that the party of
the Reformation broke out. The elector of
Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, the land-
grave of Hesse, the dukes of Luneburg, the prince
of Anhalt, and, in conjunction with them, the depu-
ties of fourteen imperial cities, published a solemn
protest against the decree of the diet, declaring it
A.D. 1529—1532.
DIET OF AUGSBURG.
49
to be impious and unjust; and from this they kept
the name of Protestants.
The landgrave of Hesse, feeling the necessity of
combining all the dissident sects so as to form a
party which might be formidable to the Catholics
of Germany, endeavoured to bring about a recon-
ciliation between Luther and theSacramentarians;
but Luther foresaw the inutility of the attempt: —
" The landgrave of Hesse has summoned us to
attend at Marburg on St. Michael's day, in the
view of reconciling us and the Sacrameutarians. . .
I augur no good from it; it is all a snare; and the
victory, I fear, will be theirs, as in the age of
Arius. Meetings of the kind are ever more injurious
than useful. . .This young man of Hesse is restless
and full of ebullient ideas. The Lord has saved
us these two last years from two great conflagra-
tions which would have set all Germany on fire."
(August 2nd, 1529.) " We have been most sump-
tuously entertained by the landgrave. CEcolampa-
dius, Zwingle, Bucer, &c., were there; and all
entreated for peace with extraordinary humility.
The conference lasted two days. I opposed CEco-
lampadius and Zwingle with the text, ' This is my
body,' and refuted their objections. In short,
they are ignorant persons, incapable of sustaining
a discussion." (October 12th.) " I am delighted,
my dear Amsdorff, that you are delighted with our
synod of Marburg. The thing is apparently
trifling; but, in reality, of great importance. The
prayers of the pious have confounded, paralyzed,
humiliated them. The whole of Zwingle's argu-
ment is reducible to this, that there can be no
body without place or dimension. CEcolampadius
maintained that the Fathers called the bread a
sign, and that therefore it was not very body. . . .
They besought us to give them the name of
brothers. Zwingle asked it of the landgrave with
tears. ' There is no spot on earth,' he said, ' where
I would sooner pass my life than Wittemberg.'. . .
We only allowed them the name save as charity com-
pels us to give it to our enemies. . . They conducted
themselves in every way with incredible humility
and candour; in order, as is now clear to be seen,
to beguile us into a fictitious agreement, so as to
make us the partisans and patrons of their errors.
... 0 crafty Satan; but Christ, who has saved us,
is abler than thou. I am now no longer astonished
at their impudent lies. I see that they cannot act
otherwise, and glorify myself for their fall." (June
1st, 1530.)
This theological war of Germany filled up the
intervals of truce in the grand European war
carried on by Charles the Fifth against Francis I.
and against the Turks; indeed, seldom slackened
even in the most violent crises of the latter. Ger-
many, so absorbed at this moment in the considera-
tion of religion as to be on the point of forgetting
the impending ruin with which she was threatened
by the most formidable enemies, presents an im-
posing spectacle. Whilst the Turks were over-
leaping all the ancient barriers, and Solyman
pushing on his Tartars beyond Vienna, Germany
was disputing on ti*ansubstantiation and free-will,
and her most illustrious warriors sat in diets and
interrogated doctors. Such was the phlegmatic
intrepidity of the great nation; such its confidence
in its massive strength. Charles the Fifth and
Ferdinand were so taken up with the Turkish and
the French war, with the taking of Rome and
defence of Vienna, that the Protestants were
granted toleration until the next council. But in
1530, Charles, seeing France humbled, Italy sub-
jected, and Solyman repulsed, undertook the grand
trial of the Reformation. Both parties appeared
at Augsburg. Luther's followers, designated by
the general name of Pi-otestants, were anxious to
distinguish themselves from the other enemies of
Rome whose excesses might injure their cause,
from the repubhcan Zwinglians of Switzerland,
who wei-e odious to the princes and nobles, and
especially from the Anabaptists, proscribed as
enemies of order and society. Luther, still ob-
noxious to the sentence pronounced against him at
Worms, by which he was declared a heretic, could
not be present. His place was filled by the mild
and peaceful Melanchthon, a gentle and timid
being like Erasmus, whose friend he remained in
despite of Luther. However, the elector brought
him as near as possible to Augsburg, lodging him
in the fortress of Cobourg, where Luther could be
in constant correspondence with the Protestant
ministers, and whence he wrote to Melanchthon
on the 22nd of April: — "I have arrived at my
Sinai, dear Philip, but will make it a Zion, and
erect thereon three tabernacles, one to the Psalm-
ist, one to the prophets, one to ^sop (whose fables
he was then translating). There is nothing want-
ing to render my solitude complete. I have a vast
house which commands the castle and the keys of
all the rooms. There are barely thirty persons in
the fortress; and twelve of these are watchers by
night, and two others sentinels, always posted on
the towers." (April 22nd.)
To Spalatin, (May 9th): — "You are going to
Augsburg without having taken the auspices, and
not knowing when they will allow you to begin. I,
indeed, am already in the midst of the comitia, in
the presence of magnanimous sovereigns, kings,
dukes, prmces, nobles, who confer gravely on affah's
of state, and with indefatigable voice fill the air
with their decrees and preachings. They do not
sit confined in the royal caves you call palaces, but
have the heavens for their tent, the verdure of the
trees for their rich and variegated carpet, and the
earth, to its remotest bounds, for their domain.
They have a hoiTor of the stupid luxury of gold
and silk, and all wear the same colours and coimte-
nances; they are all equally black; all uidulge in
the same music ; and this song of theirs, on a single
note, is varied only by the agreeable dissonance of
the younger voices blending with the older. I have
never heard a word about their emperor; and they
have a sovereign contempt for that quadruped in
which our knights delight, possessing something
better with which they can laugh at the rage of
cannons. As far as 1 can understand their decrees,
they have unanimously determined upon making
war the whole of this year on barley, wheat, and
grain, and, in fact, on the choicest fruits and seeds.
It is to be feared, too, that they will triumph in
all directions, being a race of skilful and crafty
warriors, equally skilled to seize their prey by force
or by surprise. I, an idle spectator, have assisted
with great satisfaction at their comitia. The hope
I have conceived of the victories theu- corn-age will
ensure them over the wheat and barley, or any
other enemy, has made me the sincere friend of
these patres patrke, these saviours of the republic.
And if I can aid them by vows, I ask of Heaven, that
50
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1529—1532.
delivered from the odious name of crows, &c. All
this is trifling; but serious trifling, and necessary to
chase the thoughts which oppress me, if chase them
it can." (May 9th.) "The noble lords who form
our comitia run, or rather sail, through the air.
They sally forth early in the morning to war,
armed with their invincible beaks, and while they
pillage, ravage, and devour, I am freed for a time
from their eternal songs of victory. In the even-
ing, they return in triumph; fatigue closes their
eyes; but their sleep is sweet and light, like a con-
queror's. Some days since I made my way into
their palace to view the pomp of their empire. The
unfortunates were seized with terroi*, imagining
that I came to destroy the results of their industry.
When I saw that I alone made so many Achilleses
and Hectors tremble, I clapped my hands, threw
my hat into the air, and thought myself sufficiently
avenged to be able to laugh at them. All this is
not mere trifling; 'tis an allegory, a presage of what
will come to pass. And, even thus, we shall see ail
these harpies, who are now at Augsburg screeching
and Romanising, trembling before God's word."
(June 19th.)
Melanchthon, ti'ansformed at Augsburg into a
partisan leader, and forced to do battle daily with
legates, princes, and empei'or, was exceedingly dis-
composed with the active life with which he had
been saddled, and often unbosomed his troubles to
Luther, when all the comfort he got was rough re-
buke: "You tell me of your labours, dangers, tears;
am I on roses ? Do not I share your burden ? Ah !
would to heaven my cause were such as to allow me
to shed tears !" (June 29th.) "May God reward
the tyrant of Saltzburg, who works thee so much
ill, according to his works ! He deserves another
sort of answer from thee; such as I would have
made him, perchance; such as has never struck his
ear. They must, I fear, hear the saying of Julius
Ccesar: ' They icoiild have it.'' "... "I write in
vain, because, with thy philosophy, thou wishest to
set all these things right with thy reason, that is,
to be unreasoning with reason. Go on; continue to
kill thyself so, without seeing that neither thy hand
nor thy mind can grasp this thing." (30th June,
1530.) "God has placed this cause in a certain
spot, unknown to thy rhetoric and thy philosophy —
that spot is faith; there all things are inaccessible
to the sight ; and whoever would render them
visible, apparent, and comprehensible, gets pains
and tears as the price of his labour, as thou hast.
God has said that his dwelling is in the clouds and
thick darkness. Had Moses sought a means of
avoiding Pharaoh's army, Israel would, perhaps,
still be in Egypt. ... If we have not faith, why
not seek consolation in the faith of others, for some
must necessarily have it, though we have not ? Or
else, must we say that Christ has abandoned us be-
fore the fulfilment of time ? If he be not with us,
where is he in this world ? If we be not the church,
or part of the church, where is the church ? Is
Ferdinand the church, or the duke of Bavaria, or
the pope, or the Turk, or their fellows ? If we have
not God's word, who has ? These things are beyond
thee, for Satan torments and weakens thee. That
Chi'ist may heal thee is my sincere and constant
prayer !" (.June 29th.) " I am in poor health. . .
But I despise the angel of Satan, that is buffeting
my flesh. If I cannot read or write, I can at least
think and pray, and even wrestle with the devil;
and then sleep, idle, play, sing. Fret not thyself
away, dear Philip, about a matter which is not in
thy hand, but in that of One mightier than thou,
and from whom no one can snatch it." (July 31st.)
Melanchthon believes it possible to reconcile
the two parties ; but Luther had early seen its
impi'acticability. At the commencement of the
Reformation, he had often demanded public dis-
putatious, feeling bound to try every means before
giving up the hope of preserving Christian unity ;
but, towards the close of his life, in fact, from the
holding of the diet of Augsburg, he declared
against aU such word-combats, in which the con-
quered party will never own its defeat. " I am
opposed to all attempts to bring the two doctrines
into harmony ; for the thing is impossible, except
the pope consent to abolish the papacy. It is
enough for us to have rendered an account of our
belief, and asked for peace. Why hope to convert
them to the truth ?" (August 2(Jth.) To Spalatin.
(August 26th.) " I hear you have undertaken a
marvellous task, to reconcile Luther and the pope.
... If you accomplish it, I promise you to recon-
cile Christ and Belial." In a letter of the 21st of
July, to Melanchthon, he writes : " You will see
how ti'ue a prophet I am in reiterating the impos-
sibility of reconciling the two doctrines, and that it
is enough for us to obtain the preservation of the
public peace." His prophecies were unheeded ;
conferences were held ; and the Protestants were
asked for a confession of faith. Melanchthon drew
it up, taking Luther's opinion on the most im-
portant points. To Melanchthon. " I have re-
ceived your apology, and am astonished at your
asking what we are to cede to the papists. If the
prince, indeed, be in any danger, that is another
question. But, as far as I am concerned, more
concessions are made in this apology than are
becoming. If they reject them, I do not see how
I can go further, except their arguments strike
me with much more force on reflection than now.
1 pass my days and nights pondering, interpreting,
analysing, searching the Scriptures, and am only
daily more confirmed in my doctrine. Our adver-
saries do not yield us a hair, and yet require us to
yield them the canon, masses, communion in one
kind, their customary jurisdiction, and, still more,
to acknowledge that they are justified in the
whole of their conduct to us, and that we have
accused them wrongfully ; in other words, they
require us to justify them, and condemn ourselves
out of our own lips, which would be not simply to
retract, but to be trebly accursed by our own
selves. ... I do not like your supporting your-
selves in such a cause by my opinions. I will
neither be nor seem your chief. . . If it be not
your own cause, I will not have it called mine, and
of my imposing. If I be its sole supporter, I will
be its sole defender." (September 20th.) Two days
previously he had written to him, " If I hear you
are getting on badly, I shall hardly be able to
refrain from facing this formidable row of Satan's
teeth." And shortly after, " I would fain be the
victim to be sacrificed by this last council, as John
Huss was at Constance that of the last day of the
papal fortunes." (July 21st.)
The Protestant profession of faith was presented
to the diet, " and read by order of Csesar before all
the princes and states of the empire. 'Tis exceed-
ing happiness for me to have lived to see Christ
A.D. 1529—1532.
LEAGUE OF THE PROTESTANT PRINCES.
51
preached by his confessors before such an assembly,
and in so fine a confession." (July 6th.) This con-
fession was signed by five electors, thirty ecclesias-
tical princes, twenty-three secular princes, twenty-
two abbots, thirty-two counts and barons, and thirty-
nine free and imperial cities. " The prince elector
of Saxony, the margrave George of Brandenburg,
John Frederick the younger, landgrave of Hesse,
Ernest and Francis, dukes of Luneburg, prince
Wolfgang of Anhalt, the cities of Nuremberg and of
Reutlingen have signed the confession. . . . Many
bishops incline to peace, without caring about the
sophisms of Eck and Faber. The archbishop of
Mentz wishes for peace, as does duke Henry of
Brunswick, who invited Melanchthon familiarly to
dinner, and assured him that he could not deny the
reasonableness of the articles touching communion
in both lands, the marriage of priests, and the
inutility of making distinctions as to matters of
food. All our people confess that no one has
shown himself more conciliatory in all the con-
ferences than the emperor, who received our prince
not only with kindness, but with respect." (July 6th.)
The bishop of Augsburg, and even Charles V.'s
confessor were favourably disposed to the Lu-
therans ; and the Spaniard told Melanchthon that
he was surprised at Luther's view of faith being
disputed in Germany, and that he had always
entertained the same opinion. But whatever Lu-
ther may say of Charles V.'s graciousness, he
closed the discussions by calling on the reformers
to renounce their errors under pain of being put
under the ban of the empire, seemed even inclined
to use violence, and at one time closed the gates of
Augsburg for a moment. " If the emperor chooses
to publish an edict, let him ; he published one
after Worms. Let us listen to the emperor m-
asmuch as he is emperor, nothing more. What is
that clown (he alludes to duke George) to us, who
wishes to be thought emperor ?" (.July 15th.) "Our
cause can defend itself better from violence and
threats than from the Satanic wiles which I dread,
especially at the present moment. . . . Let them
restore us Leonard Keiser, and the many whom
they have unjustly put to death ; let them restore
us the innumerable souls lost by their impious
doctrine ; let them restore all the wealth which
they have accumulated with their deceitful indul-
gences and frauds of every kind ; let them restore
to God his glory violated by such innumerable
blasphemies ; let them restore, in person and in
manners, that ecclesiastical pm-ity which they have
so shamefully sullied. What then ? Then we,
too, shall be able to speak de Possessorlo." (July
13th.)
" The emperor intends simply to order all
things to be restored to their pristine state, and
the reign of the pope to recommence ; which, I
much fear, will excite great troubles, to the ruin of
priests and clerks. The most powerful cities, as
Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Frankfort, Strasburg,
and twelve others, openly reject the imperial de-
cree, and make common cause with our princes.
You have heard of the inundations at Rome, and '
in Flanders and Brabant ; signs sent of God, but
not understood by the wicked. You are aware,
too, of the vision of the monks of Spire. Brentius
writes me word, that a numerous army has been
seen in the air at Baden, and, on its flank, a sol-
dier, triumphantly brandishing a lance, and who
passed by the adjoining mountain, and over the
Rhine." (Dec. 5th.) Hardly was the diet dissolved
before the Protestant princes assembled at Smal-
kalde, and concluded a defensive league, by which
they agreed to form themselves into one body.
(Dec. 31st.) They entered a protest against the
election of Ferdinand to the title of king of the
Romans ; prepared for war, fixed the contingents,
and addressed the kings of France, England, and
Denmark. Luther was accused of having insti-
gated the Protestants to assume this hostile atti-
tude. " 1 have not advised resistance to the em-
peror, as has been reported. My opinion, as a
theologian, is. If the jurists can show by then-
laws that resistance is allowable, I would leave
them to follow their laws. If the emperor have
ruled in his laws, that in such a case he may be
resisted, let him suffer by the law of his own
making. The prince is a political personage ; in
acting as prince, he does not act as Christian ; for
the Christian is neither prince, nor man, nor wo-
man, nor any one of this world. If then it be law-
ful for the prince, as prince, to resist Caesar, let
him do as his judgment and his conscience dictate.
To the Christian, nothing of the kind is lawful ; he is
dead to the world." (Jan. 15th, 1531.) This year,
(1531), Luther wrote an answer to a small work
anonymously printed at Dresden, which accused
the Protestants of secretly arming themselves, and
wishing to surprise the Catholics, who were think-
ing solely of peace and concord. " No one is to
know the author of this work. Well, I will remain
in ignorance too, I will have a cold for once, and
not smell the awkward pedant. However, I will
try my hand and strike boldly on the sack ; if the
blows fall on the ass that can-ies it, it will not be my
fault ; they were intended of course for the sack.
Whether the charge agauist the Lutherans be true
or not, is no concern of mine. I did not advise
them to such a course ; but, since the papists an-
nounce their belief in it, I can only rejoice in their
illusions and alax'ms, and would willingly increase
them if I could, were it only to kill them with fears.
If Cain kills Abel, and Annas and Caiaphas perse-
cute Jesus, 'tis just that they should be punished for
it. Let them live in transports of alarm, tremble
at the sound of a leaf, see in every quarter the
phantom of insurrection and death ; nothing juster.
Is it not true, impostors, that when our confession
of faith was presented at Augsburg, a papist said,
' Here they give us a book written with ink ;
would they had to record their answer in blood ?
Is it not true that the elector of Brandenburg, and
duke George of Saxony, have promised the em-
peror a supply of five thousand horses against the
Lutherans ? Is it not true, that numbers of
priests and lords have betted that it would be all
over with the Lutherans before St. Michael's day ?
Is it not true, that the elector of Brandenburg has
publicly declared, that the emperor and all the em-
pire would devote body and goods to this end ? Do
you think yom- edict is not known? that we are un-
aware that by that edict all the swords of the
empire are unsheathed and sharpened, all its ca-
valry in saddle, to fall upon the elector of Saxony
and his party, in order to put all to fire and sword,
and spread far and wide tears and desolation ?
Look at your edict ; look at your murderous de-
signs, sealed with your own seal and arms, and
then dare accuse the Luthei-ans of troubling the
e2
52
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1534—1536.
general harmony ? 0 impudence, 0 boundless hy-
pocrisy ! . . . . But I understand you. You would have
us neglect to prepare for the war with which you
have been so long threatening us, so that we may
be slaughtered unresistingly, like sheep by the
butcher. Your servant, my good friends, I, a
preacher of the word, ought to endure all this, and
all, to whom this grace is given, ought equally to
endure it. But that all the rest will, I cannot an-
swer for to the tyrants. Were I publicly to recom-
mend our party so to do, the tyrants would take ad-
vantage of this, and I will not spare them the fear
they entertain of our resistance. Do they wish to
will their spurs by massacring us ? Let them win
them with risk, as it becomes brave knights. Cut-
throats by ti'ade, let them expect at least to be
received like cutthroats.
..." I care not about being accused of violence ;
it shall be my glory and honour henceforward to
have it said how I rage and storm against the
papists. For more than ten years I have been hu-
miliating myself, and speaking them fau'ly. To
what end ? Only to exasperate the evil. Those
clowns are but the haughtier for it. Well! since they
are incorrigible, since there is no longer any hope
of shaking their infernal resolutions by kindness, 1
break with them, and will leave them no rest from
my curses until I sink into the grave. They shall
never more have a good word from me; I would
have them buried to the sound of my thunders and
lightnings. I can no longer pray without cursing.
If I say, ' Hallowed he thy name,'' I feel myself con-
strained to add, ' Accursed be the name of papists,
and of all who blaspheme thee!' If I say,' Thy
kingdom come,' I add, ' Cursed be the popedom, and
all kingdoms opposed to thine.' If I say, ' Thy
will be done,' I follow with, 'Cui-sed and disap-
pointed be the schemes of the papists, and of all
who fight against thee!' . . . Such are my ardent
prayers daily, and those of all the truly faithful in
Christ. . . . Yet do I keep towards all the world
a kind and loving heart, and my greatest enemies
themselves know it well. Often in the night, when
unable to sleep, I ponder in my bed, painfully and
anxiously, how the papists may yet be won to re-
pent, before a fearful judgment overtakes them.
But it seems that it must not be. They scorn re-
pentance, and ask for our blood with loud cries.
The bishop of Saltzbui'g said to Master Philip, at
the diet of Augsburg : ' Wherefore so long dis-
puting ? We are well aware that you are in the
right V and another day: ' You will not yield, nor
will we, so one party must exterminate the other;
you are the little, we the great one; we shall see
which will gain the day.' Never could I have
thought to hear of such words being spoken,"
CHAPTER II.
A.D. 1534 — 1536.
THE ANABAPTISTS OF MONSTER.
Whilst the two great leagues of the princes are in
presence, and seem to defy each other, a third
starts up between them to their common dismay ; —
the people, again, as in the war of the peasants, but
an organized people, in possession of a wealthy city.
The jacquerie of the north, more systematic than
that of the south, produces the ideal of the German
democracy of the sixteenth century — a biblical
royalty, a popular David, a handicraft messiah.
The mystic German companionship enthrouises a
tailor. His attempt was daring, not absurd. Ana-
baptism was in the ascendant, not in Munster only,
but had spread into Westphalia, Brabant, Guelders,
Holland, Frisia, and the whole littoral of the Baltic,
as far as Livonia. The Anabaptists formalised the
curse imprecated by the conquered peasants on
Luther. They detested him as the friend of the
nobles, the prop of civil authority, the remora of the
Reformation. " There are four prophets — two true,
two false; the true are David and John of Leyden,
the false, the pope and Luther; but Luther is worse
than the pope."
" How the Gospel first arose at Munster, and how
it ended there after the destruction of tlie Anabap-
tists, A veritable history, and well worthy of being
read and handed down {for the spirit of the Anabap-
tists of Munster still liveth) ; narrated by Henricus
Dorpius of that city." We shall confine ourselves to
a summary of this prolix narrative: —
Rothmann (a Lutheran or Zwinglian) first
preached the Reformation at Munster in 1532, with
such success that the bishop, at the landgrave of
Hesse's intercession, allowed the Gospellers the use
of six of his churches. Shortly afterwards a
journeyman tailor (John of Leyden) introduced the
doctrine of the Anabaptists into several families.
He was aided in his labours by Hermann Stapraeda
an Anabaptist preacher of Moersa; and their secret
meetings soon became so numerous, that Catholics
and Reformers equally took the alarm, and expelled
the Anabaptists from the city. But they boldly re-
turned, intimidated the council, and compelled it to
fix a day for a public discussion in the town-hall,
on the baptism of children; and Rothmann himseli'
became their convertite, and one of their leaders. . .
One day, one of their preachers x'uns through the
streets, exclaiming, " Repent, repent; reform and
be baptized, or suffer God's vengeance!" Whether
through fear or religious zeal, many who heard him
hurried to be baptized; and on this the Anabap-
tists throng the market-place, crying out, " Down
with the pagans who will not be baptized." They
seize the cannon and ammunition, take possession
of the town-hall, and maltreat all Catholics and
Lutherans they fall in with. The latter, in their
turn, coalesce, and attack the Anabaptists. After
various indecisive struggles, it was agreed that
each party should be free to profess its own belief;
but the Anabaptists broke the treaty, and secretly
summoned their brethren in the adjoining cities
to Munster : — " Leave all you have," they wrote,
"houses, wives, children; leave all, and join us:
your losses shall be made up to you tenfold '
When the richer citizens saw the city crowded
with strangers, they quitted it as they could (in
Lent, 1534). Emboldened by their departure and
the reinforcements they were receiving, the Ana-
baptists soon replaced the town council, which was
Lutheran, with men of their own party. Thej
next took to plundering the churches and con-
vents, and scoured the city, armed with halberts,
arquebusses, and clubs, exclaiming, " Repent,
Repent !" a cry which soon became, " Quit thu
city, ye wicked! quit it, or be sacrificed!" and they
pitilessly drove forth all who were not of their
own sect, sparing neither aged men nor pregnant
A.D. 1534—1536.
THE ANABAPTISTS OF MUNSTER.
63
women. Many of these poor fugitives fell into
the bishop's hands, who was preparing to lay siege
to the city, and who, disregardless of the fact that
they wei-e not Anabaptists, threw some into prison,
and executed others.
The Anabaptists being now masters of the city,
their chief prophet, John Matthiesen, ordered all
to bring their goods into one common stock, without
any reservation, under pain of death. The terrified
people obeyed ; and the property of those they had
expeUed the city was also appropi'iated. The pro-
phet next proclaimed it to be the will of the Father,
that all books should be burnt save the Old and
New Testament ; and twenty thousand florins'
worth of books were accordingly burnt in the
squax-e before the cathedral. The same prophet
shoots a farrier dead, who has maligned the pro-
phets ; and, soon afterwards, runs through the
streets, a halbert in his hand, crying out that the
Father has ordered him to repulse the enemy.
Hardly had he passed the gates before he was
killed. He was succeeded by John of Leyden, who
married his widow, and who reanimated the people,
dispirited by the death of liis predecessor. The
bishop ordered the assault to be delivered on Pen-
tecost, but was repulsed with great loss. John of
Leyden named twelve of the faithful (among whom
were three nobles) to be ancients in Israel. . . .
He also announced new revelations from God con-
cerning marriage ; and the preachers, convinced
by his arguments, preached for three days suc-
cessively a plurality of wives. Many of the towns-
men declared against the new doctrine, and even
flung the preachers and one of the prophets into
prison ; but were soon obliged to release them,
with a loss of forty-nine on their part.
On St. John's day, 1534, a new prophet, a gold-
smith of Warendorff", assembled the people, and
announced that it had been revealed to him that
John of Leyden was to rule over the whole earth,
and sit on the throne of David, until such time as
God the Father should come and claim it. . . . The
twelve ancients wei'e deposed, and John of Leyden
proclaimed king.
The more wives the Anabaptists took, the more
the spirit of libertinism spread, and they committed
fearful excesses on young girls of ten, twelve, and
fourteen. These violences, and the distress conse-
quent on the siege, alienated part of the inhabitants;
and many suspected John of Leyden of imposi-
tion, and thought of giving him up to the bishop.
The king redoubled his vigilance, and nominated
twelve bishops to maintain his authority in the
town (Twelfth-day, 1534), promising them the
thrones of all the princes of the earth, and distri-
buting beforehand among them, electorates and
principalities, exempting from this proscription
" the noble landgrave of Hesse " alone, whom he
hopes to have to call a brother in the faith. . . .
He named Easter-day as the time the town would
be delivered. . . . One of the queens, having ob-
served that she could not think it to be God's will
that the people should be left to die of misery and
hunger, the king led her to the mai'ket-place, made
her kneel down in the midst of his other wives in
the same posture, and struck off" her head, whilst
they sang, " Glory to God in the highest," and all
the people danced around. Yet they were left
with nothing to eat but bread and salt ; and, towards
the close of the siege, regularly distributed the
flesh of the dead, with the exception cf such as had
died of contagious diseases. On St. John's day,
1535, a deserter informed the bishop how he might
attack the city with advantage ; and it was taken
the self-same day, after an obstinate resistance and
a general massacre of the Anabaptists. The king,
with his vicar and his lieutenant, was borne off
prisoner between two horses, a double chain round
his neck, and his head and his feet bare. . . . The
bishop questioned him sternly on the horrible cala-
mity of which he had been the cause, when he
replied, — " Francis of Waldeck (the bishop's name),
if 1 had had my way, they should have all died of
hunger before I would have surrendered the city.''
Many other interesting details ai'e given in a
document, inserted in the second volume of
Luther's German works (Witt's edition), under the
following title: News of the Anabaptists of Munster.
"... A week after the repulse of the first
assault, the king began his reign by forming a com-
plete court, appointing masters of ceremonies, and
all the other officei's usual in the courts of secular
princes ; and he chose a queen out of his wives,
who has her court likewise. She is a handsome
Dutch woman, of noble birth, who was the wife of a
prophet recently killed, and who left her in the family
way. The king has one-and-thirty horses covered
with housings of cloth of gold, and has had costly
robes made for himself, adonied with the gold and
silver ornaments taken from the churches. His
squire is similarly arrayed ; and he wears, besides,
golden rings, as do the queen and her virgins.
When the king parades the city in state, on horse-
back, he is accompanied by pages ; one, on his
right hand, beai'ing the crown and the Bible ;
another, a naked sword. One of them is the bishop
of Munster's son, who is a prisoner, and who is the
king's valet. The king's triple crown is surmounted
by a globe, transfixed with a golden and a silver
sword ; and in the middle of the pummels of the
two swords, is a small cross on which is inscribed,
A king of justice over the zrorld. The queen
wears the same. In this array, the king repairs
tlnnce a week to the market-place, where he seats
himself on a throne made on purpose. His lieute-
nant, named Knipperdolling, stands a step lower,
and then come the councilloi's. All who have
business with the king, incline their bodies twice
before the king, and prostrate themselves on the
ground at the third inclination, before entering on
their business. One Tuesday, they celebrated the
holy supper in the public square; about four thou-
sand two hundred sat down to table. There were,
three courses ; bouilli, ham, then roast meat. The
king, his wives, and their servants waited on the
guests. After the meal, the king and the queen
took barley bread, broke it, and distributed it,
saying, ' Take, eat, and proclaim the Loi'd's death.'
They then handed a jug of wine, saying, ' Take,
drink all pf you, and proclaim the Lord's death.'
In like manner, the guests broke their cakes, and
presented them to each other, saying, ' Brothers
and sisters, take and eat. Even as Jesus Christ
off'ered himself up for me, so do I wish to offer
myself up for thee ; and even as the grains of
barley are joined in this cake, and the grapes in
this wine, so are we united.' They also exhorted
one another to use no idle words, or break the law
of the Lord ; and concluded by retuming thanks to
God, ending with the canticle, Glory be to God in
54
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1534—153(5.
the highest. The king, his wives, and servants, then
sat down with them at table. When all was over,
the king asked the assembly, whether they were
ready to do and suffer God's will ? They all re-
plied, Yea. Then the prophet John of Warendorff,
arose and said, ' That God had bade him send forth
some from among them to announce the miracles
which they had witnessed;' adding, that those
whom he should name were to repair to four towns
of the empire, and preach there. . . . Each of
these was presented with a piece of gold, of the
value of nine florins, together with money for his
expenses ; and they set out that very evening.
" They reached the appointed cities on the eve of
St. Gall, and paraded the streets, crying out, ' Re-
pent ye, for God's mercy is exhausted. The axe is
already at the root of the tree. Your city must
accept peace, or perish!' Taken before the coun-
cil, they laid their cloaks on the gi'ound, and casting
into them the said pieces of gold, they said, ' We
are sent by the Father to declare peace unto you.
If you accept it, bring all your goods together in
common; if you will not, we protest against you
before God with this piece of gold, which shall be
for a witness that you have rejected the peace
which he sent you. The time is now come foretold
by the prophets, the time when God wills there to
be only justice upon earth; and when the king
shall have established the reign of justice all over
the earth, then Jesus Christ will remit the govern-
ment into the hands of the Father.' They were
then thrown into prison, and interrogated on their
belief, way of life, &c They said that there
were four prophets, two true, two false; that the
true were David and John of Leyden; the false,
the pope and Luther. ' Luther,' they said, ' is still
worse than the pope.' They consider all Anabap-
tists elsewhere as damned. . , . ' In Munster,' they
said, ' we have in general from five to eight wives,
or more ; but each is obliged to confine himself to
one until she is pregnant. All young girls, above
twelve, must marry.' . . . They destroy churches
and all buildings consecrated to God. . . . They
are expecting, at Munster, people from Groningen
and other countries of Holland, and when they
come, the king will arise with all his forces, and
subjugate the whole earth. They hold it to be im-
possible to comprehend Scripture aright, without
its being interpreted by prophets ; and when it is
objected to them that they cannot justify their en-
terprise by Scripture, some say that their Father
does not allow them to explain themselves there-
upon ; others answer, ' The prophet has com-
manded it by God's order.' Not one of them
would purchase mercy by retreating. They sang
and returned thanks to God that they had been
found worthy to suffer for his name's sake."
The Anabaptists, who were called upon by the
landgrave of Hesse to justify themselves for having
elected a king, replied (Jan. 1535), " That the time
for the restoration mentioned by the holy books
was come; that the Gospel had thrown open to
them the prison of Babylon ; and that it now be-
hoved to render unto the Babylonians according to
their works ; and that an attentive penisal of the
prophets and the Apocalypse, &c., would show the
landgrave whether they had elected a king of them-
selves or by God's ordei-, &c.
After the convention entered into in 1533, be-
tween the bishop of Munster and the city, and
which was brought about by the mediation of the
landgrave of Hesse's councillors . . . the Anabap-
tists sent the landgrave their book De Restitiilionc.
He read it with indignation, and ordered his theo-
logians to reply to it, and to oppose the Anabap-
tists on nine points, which he particularly specified,
and in which he objects to them, amongst other
things, — 1st, The making justification consist not
in faith alone, but in faith and works together.
2nd, Of unjustly accusing Luther of never having
preached good works. 3rd, Of defending free-will.
In the De Restitutione, the Anabaptists classified
the whole history of the world into three principal
parts. " The first world, which lasted until Noah,
was sunk beneath the waters. The second, that
in which we live, will be melted and purified by
fire. The third will be a new heaven and a new
earth, inhabited by justice. This is what God pre-
figured in the holy ark, in which there were the
porch, the sanctuary, and the Holy of Holies. . . .
The coming of the third world will be preceded by
universal restitution and chastisement. The wicked
will be put to death, the reign of justice prepared,
Christ's enemies cast down, and all things restored.
It is this time which is now beginning."
"Discourse or Discussion, held at Beverger, by An-
thony Corvinus and John Kymeus, with John of Ley-
den, king of Munster. — When the king entered our
room, with his gaoler, we gave him a friendly
greeting, and invited him to take a seat by the
fire. We enquired after his health, and how he
felt in his prison. He replied that he suffered
from the cold there, and was ill at heart, but that
since it was God's will, he ought to endure all pa-
tiently. By degi'ees, and convex-sing friendly with
him, for we could get nothing out of him by any
other means, we drew him on to speak of his king-
dom and his doctrine as follows : —
Opening of the examination. The ministers. " Dear
John, we have heard extraordinary and horrible
things of your government. If they are as told us,
and, unfortunately, the whole is only too true, we
cannot conceive how you can justify your under-
taking from Holy Scripture."
Tfie king. " What we have done and taught, we
have done and taught rightfully, and we can justify
our undertaking, our actions, and our doctrine before
God, and to whomsoever it belongs to judge us."
Tlie ministers object to him, that the spiritual
kingdom of Jesus Christ is alone spoken of in Scrip-
ture ; " My kingdom is not of this world," are his
own words.
The king. " I clearly comprehend your argu-
ment touching the spiritual kingdom of Jesus, and
do not contravene the texts you quote. But you
must distinguish the spiritual kingdom of Jesus
Christ, which has reference to the time of suffering,
and of which, after all, neither you nor Luther
have any clear notion, from that other kingdom,
which, after the resurrection, will be established in
this world for a thousand years. All the texts
which treat of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus,
relate to the time of suffering ; but those which we
find in the prophets and the Apocalypse, and which
treat of the temporal kingdom, refer to the time
of glory and of power, which Jesus will enjoy in
this world with his followers. Our kingdom of
Munster was an image of this temporal kingdom
of Christ's. You know that God announces many
things by figures. We believed that our kingdom
A.D. 1534—1536.
THE ANABAPTISTS OF MONSTER.
55
would last until the coming of the Lord ; but we
now see our eiTor on this point, and that of our
propliets. However, since we have been in prison,
God has revealed to us the true understanding
. . I am not ignorant that you commonly refer those
passages to Christ's spiritual kingdom, which ought
to be understood of the temporal. But of what
use are these spiritual interpretations, if nothing
is to be one day realized ? . . . God's chief object
in creating the world, was to take pleasure in men,
to whom he has given a reflection of his strength
and his power."
The ministers. " And how will you justify youx'self
when God shall ask you on the day of judgment,
' Who made you king ? Who ordered you to dif-
fuse such frightful eri'ors, to the great detriment
of my word V "
The kiuij. " I shall answer, ' The prophets of
Munster ordered rae so to do, as being your di-
vine will ; in proof whereof they pledged me their
body and soul.' "
T/ie ministers enquire what divine revelations
he enjoyed touching his elevation to the throne.
The king. " I was vouchsafed no revelation ; only
thoughts came into my head, that there must be a
king in Munster, and that I must be that king.
These thoughts deeply agitated and afflicted rae.
I prayed to God to deign to consider my inability,
and not to load me with such a burden ; but if lie
willed otherwise, I besought him to grant that I
should be designated as the chosen person by
prophets worthy of faith, and in possession of his
word, so held my peace, and communicated my
thoughts to no one. But a fortnight afterwards, a
prophet arose in the midst of the people, and pro-
claimed that God had made known to him that
John of Leyden was to be king. He annomiced
the same to the council, who immediately divested
themselves of their power and proclaimed me king.
He, likewise, placed in my hand the sword of jus-
tice. On this wise it was that I became king."
Second Article. The king. " We only resisted
the authorities because they forbade us our bap-
tism and God's word, and we resisted to violence.
You assert that we acted wrongfully therein, but
does not St. Peter say, that we are to obey God
rather than men ? . . . You would not pass whole-
sale condemnation on what we have done, did you
know how those things took place." . . ,
The ministers. " Set off and justify your acts
as you may, you will not the less be rebels and
guilty of high treason. The Christian is bound to
suffer ; and though the whole council had been of
your party, (which was not the case,) you ought to
have borne with violence rather than have begun
such a schism, sedition, and tyranny, in opposition
alike to the word of God, the majesty of the em-
peror, the royal dignity, and that of the electorate,
and princes and states of the empire."
Tlie king. " We know what we have done ; God
be our judge."
The ministers. " We, too, know the foundation we
have for whatwesay: God be our judge, likewise!"
Third Article. The king. " We have been be-
sieged and destroyed on account of God's holy
word ; for it, have suffered hunger and all evils,
have lost our friends, and have fallen into this
frightful calamity ! Those of us who still live will
die uni-esistingly, and uncomplainingly, like tlie
slaughtered lamb." . . .
Fifth Article. The king said, that he had long
been of Zwingle's opinion ; but that he returned to
the belief in transubstaiitiation. Only he does not
grant his interlocutors that it is operant in him who
is without faith.
Sixth Article. "... What then do ye make
of Jesus Christ, if he did not receive flesh and
blood from his mother Mary ? Will you have him
to have been a phantom, a spectre ? Our Urbanns
Regius must print a second book to teach to under-
stand your native tongue, or your asses' heads will
always be impervious to instruction."
The king. " If yon knew the infinite consolation
contained in the knowledge that Jesus Christ, God
and Son of the Uviug God, became man, and shed
his blood, not Mary's, to redeem our sins (He who
is without blemish), you would not speak as you do,
and you would not entertain such contempt for our
belief."
Seventh Article. On Polygamy. The king ob-
jects to the ministers the examples of the patri-
archs. The ministers entrench themselves behind
the generally established custom of modern times,
and declare marriage to be res poUtlca. The king
contends that it is better to have many wives than
many harlots, and concludes again with the words,
" God be our judge."
Although drawn up by the mmisters themselves,
the impression left by a perusal of this document is
not favom'able to them. One cannot help admiring
the firmness, good sense, and modest simplicity of
the king of Munster, which were made more con-
spicuous still by the pedantic harshness of his
interlocutors.
Corvinus and Kymeus to the Christian reader :
" We have reported our conversation with the
king, almost word for word, without omitting one
of his arguments; only we have put them into our
own language, and stated them more scholarly.
About a week after, he sent to beg us to confer
again with him. We had a fresh discussion, which
lasted t\VD days. We found him moi'e docile than
the first time, but only saw in this a desire to save
his life. He voluntarily declared, that if pardoned,
he would, with the help of Melchior Hoffman, and
his queens, exhort to silence and obedience all the
Anabaptists, who, according to him, are very nume-
rous m Holland, Brabant, England, and Frisia ;
and even get them to baptize their children, until
arrangements could be entered into with the civil
power with regard to their religion." . . . There
follows a new profession of faith, in which John of
Leyden, whilst exhorting the Anabaptists to obe-
dience, gives it to be miderstood that he means out-
ward obedience only. He recants none of his pe-
culiar doctrines, and desh-es liberty of conscience.
With regard to the Eucharist, he declares all his
brethren to be Zwinglians, but states that God has
shown him his error on this point whilst in prison.
This confession is signed in Dutch : /, John of Ley-
den, signed with my otcn hand.
On the 19th of January, 153G, John of Leyden,
and Knipperdolling and Krechting, his vicar and
his lieutenant, were removed from tlieir dungeons;
and the next day the bishop sent his chaplain to
confer with them separately on their belief and
acts. The king testified repentance and retracted;
but the two others justified all they had done. . . .
The morning of the 22nd all the gates of Munster
were closed; and, about eight o'clock, the king,
56
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1534—1536.
stripped to the waist, was led to a scaffold erected
in the market-place, which was guarded by two
hundred foot soldiers and three hundred horse, and
crowded with spectators. He was bound to a post,
and two executioners tore off his flesh by turns with
red-hot pincers, until at last one of them plunged a
knife into his breast, and so finished the execution,
which had lasted for an hour. " At the three first
wrenches of the pincers the king uttered no cry;
but, afterwards, kept incessantly exclaiming, with
eyes raised to heaven, ' 0 my Father, take pity on
me.'' and he prayed to God earnestly to forgive him
his sins. When he felt himself sinking, he ex-
claimed: ' 0 my Father, I yield my spirit into thy
hands,' and expired. His dead body was flung upon
a hurdle, and dragged to the open place in front of
St. Lambert's tower, where three iron panniers
were ready, into one of which it was put, and secured
with chains, and then hoisted to the top of the
tower, where it was suspended by a hook. Knip-
perdoUing and Ki-echting weve executed in the.^
same hoi'rible manner; and their bodies placed in
the two other panniers, and suspended on either side
of John of Leyden's, only not so high."
Luther's preface to the News of the Anabaptists of
Munster : — " Ah ! what and how ought 1 to write
against or upon these poor people of Munster ! Is
it not clear that the devil reigns there in person, or,
rather, that there is a whole troop of devils 1 Let
us, however, recognize here the infinite grace and
mercy of God. After Germany, by innumerable
blasphemies and the blood of so many innocents,
has deserved so severe a rod, still the Father of all
mercy withholds the devil from striking his deadliest
blow, and gives us paternal warning by the gross
game Satan is playing at Munster. God's power
constrains the spirit of a hundred wiles to set about
his work awkwardly and unskilfully, in order to
allow us time to escape by repentance from the
better-aimed blows reserved for us. In fact, for
the spirit who seeks to deceive the world to begin
by taking women, by stretching forth the hand to
gi'asp honours and the kingly sword, or else, by
slaughtering people, is too gross. All can see that
such a spirit only seeks its own elevation, and to
crush all besides. To deceive, you should don a grey
gown, assume a sad and piteous air, refuse money,
eat no meat, fly women like poison, reject as dam-
nable all temporal power, refuse the sword, then
stoop gently down and stealthily pick up crown,
sword, and keys. A show like this might deceive
even the wise and spiritual. There were a fine
devil, with feathers finer than peacock or pheasant !
But to seize the crown so impudently, to take not
only one wife, but as many as caprice and lust dic-
tates ! Ah ! this is the act of a devilkin in his
horn-book; or else, of the true Satan, the learned
and able Satan, but fagoted by God's hands with
such potent chains as to be unable to act more cun-
ningly. And so the Lord warns us to dread his
chastisements, lest he leave the field free to a
learned devil, who will attack us, not with the
A, B, C, but with the true text, the difficult text.
If he does such things as a devilkin at school, what
would he not do as arational, wise, learned, lawyer-
like doctor of divinity devil ?
"... When God, in his wrath, deprives us of
his word, no deceit of the devil's is too gross. The
first attempts of Mahomet were gross; j'ct, God in-
terposing no obstacle in his way, a damnable and
infamous empire has grown up, as all the world
knows: and if God had not been our aid against
MUnzer, a Turkish empire would have arisen
through him, like unto Mahomet's. In fine, no
spark is so small, but that, if God suffers the devil
to blow at it, a fire may be kindled to consume the
whole world. The best weapon against the devil is
the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. The
devil is a spirit, and laughs at cuirass, horse, and
horseman. But our lords, bishops, and princes
will not allow the Gospel to be preached, and souls
to be rescued from the devil by the divine word:
they think throat-cutting sufficient, and so rob the
devil of bodies whilst leaving him souls. They will
succeed in like manner as the Jews, who thought to
exterminate Christ by crucifying him. . . . The
Munsterites, among other blasphemies, speak of the
birth of Jesus Christ as if he did not come (such is
their language) of the seed of Mary, and yet was of
the seed of David. But they do not explain them-
selves clearly. The devil keeps the hot soup in his
mouth, and only mutters mum, mum, meaning, pro-
bably, to infer worse. All that one can make out
is, that accordmg to them, Mary's seed or flesh
cannot redeem us. Well, devil ! mutter and spit
as you list, that one little word born overthrows all
you say. In all tongues, and over all the earth,
the child of flesh and blood, who issues from the
entrails of woman, is said to be born, and nothing
else. Now, Scripture every where says, that Jesus
Christ is born of his mother Mary, and is her first-
born. So speak Isaiah, Gabriel, &c. ' Thou shalt
conceive, &c.' To conceive, my duck, does not mean
to be a funnel through which water flows (according
to the Manichean blasphemy), but that a child is
taken out of the flesh and blood of his mother, is
nourished in her, grows in her, and is at last
brought into the world. The other tenet main-
tained by these folk, namely, that infant baptism
is a pagan rite, is similarly gross. And since they
regard all that the wicked possess as unholy, why
did they not reject the gold, silver, and other goods
they took from the wicked in Munster ? They
ought to coin quite new gold and silver. . . Their
wicked kingdom is so visibly a kingdom of gross
imposture and revolt, that it recks not to speak of
it. I have already said too much."
CHAPTER III.
A.D. 1536 — 1545.
LATTER YEARS OF LUTHER's LIFE. — POLYGAMY OF THE
LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, &C.
The momentary union of the Catholics and Pro-
testants against the Anabaptists, left them only the
greater enemies. A general council was talked of ;
but the pope dreaded it, and the Protestants re-
jected it beforehand. " I hear from the diet that
the emperor urges a council on our friends, and is
indignant at their refusal. I cannot understand
these monstrosities. The pope asserts that heretics
cannot sit in a council ; the emperor wishes us to
consent to the council and its decrees. Perhaps
God is turning them mad. . . . But their mad de-
sign, no doubt, is, that since pope, empei'or,
church, and diets have failed, they will try to cry
us down by representing us as so lost and desperate,
as to reject the council which we have so often
A.D. 1536-1545.
QUESTION OF TOLYGAMY.
57
asked for. See Satan's cleverness against the poor
fool of a God, who, undoubtedly, will be put to it to
escape such well-laid snares ! . . . Now, it is the
Lord who will make a mock of them who mock
him. If we agree to a council so disposed towards
us, why did we not five-and-twenty years since
submit to the pope, the lord of councils and to all
his bulls ?" (July 9th, 1545.)
A council might have concentrated the catholic
hierarchy, but could not have re-established the
unity of the church. The question could be settled
by arms only. The Protestants had already driven
the Austrians out of Wirtemberg, had despoiled
Henry of Brunswick, who was turning the execu-
tion of the decrees of the Imperial Chamber into a
source of proiit for himself, and were encouraging
the archbishop of Cologne to follow the example of
Albert of Bi'andenburg, and secularize his arcli-
bishopric, which would have given them a majority
in the electoral council. However, some attempts
were still made at reconciliation, and conferences
uselessly opened at Worms and Ratisbon (a.d.
1540, 1541), at which Luther did not even think it
necessary to be present. He writes that he hears
from Melanchthon that the numbers of learned per-
sonages, from all quarters, in the synod at Worms,
exceeds all precedent ; and, speaking of the strata-
gems resorted to by the Catholic party, says, " One
would fancy one saw Satan himself, with the break
of day, running to and fro in a vain search for some
den dark enough to shut out the light which pur-
sues him." (Jan. 9th, 1541.) Luther's opinion
was desired upon ten ai'ticles, which had been
agreed upon by the two parties, when the elector,
hearing that they were about to be foi'warded with-
out being first submitted to him, drew up a reply
himself ; an interference which would have aroused
Luther's indignation some years before, but by this
time he seems to have felt wearied and disgusted
with the consciousness that his labours to re-
establish evangelical purity, had only furnished the
great of the earth with the means of satisfying their
terrestrial ambition. " Our excellent prince has given
me the conditions of peace to read, which he intends
to propose to the emperor and our adversaries. 1
see that they consider the whole affair as a comedy
to be played amongst them, whilst it is a tragedy be-
twixt God and Satan, in which Satan triumphs, and
God is humiliated. But the catastrophe will come,
when the Almighty, author of this tragedy, will
give us the victory." (April 4th, 1541.)
We noticed at an early period of this narrative,
the melancholy state of dependance in which the
Reformation was placed on the princes that es-
poused the cause. Luther had time to foresee the
results. These princes were men, with men's
caprices and passions ; and hence concessions,
which, without being contrary to the principles of
the Reformation, seemed to i-edound little to the
honour of the reformers. The most warlike of
these princes, the hot-headed landgrave of Hesse,
submitted to Luther and the Protestant ministers,
that his health would not allow of his confining
himself to one wife. His instructions to Bucer for
the negotiation of this matter with the theologians
of Wittemberg, are a curious mixture of sensuality,
of religious fears, and of daring simplicity. " Ever
since I have been married," he writes, " I have
lived in adultery and fornication ; and as I won't
give up this way of living, I cannot present myself
at the holy table ; for St. Paul has said, that the
adulterer shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."
He proceeds to state the reasons which drive him
into this course : " My wife is neither good-looking
nor good-tempered ; she is not sweet ; she drinks,
and my chamberlains can tell what she then does,
&c. I am of a warm complexion, as the physicians
can prove ; and as I often attend tJie imperial
diets, where the body is pampered with high living,
how am I to manage there without a wife, espe-
cially as I can't be always taking a seraglio about
with me ? . . . How can I punish fornication and
other crimes, when all may turn round and say,
' Master, begin with yourself ?' . . . Were I to
take up arms for the Gospel's sake, I could only do
so with a troubled conscience, for I should say to
myself, ' If you die in this war, you go to the
devil.' ... I have read both the Old and New
Testament carefully, and find no other help indi-
cated than to take a second wife ; and I ask before
God, why cannot I do what Abraham, Jacob,
David, Lamech, and Solomon have done ?" The
question of polygamy had been agitated from the
very beginning of Protestantism, which professed
to restore the world to scriptural life ; and, what-
ever his repugnance, Luther durst not condemn
the Old Testament. Besides, the Protestants held
marriage to be res poUtica, and subject to the regula-
tions of the civil power. Luther, too, had already
held, theoretically, and without advising it to be
put in practice, the very doctrine advanced by the
landgrave. He had written years before: ..." I
confess, I cannot say that polygamy is repugnant
to Holy Scripture, yet would not have the practice
introduced amongst Christians, who ought to abstain
even from what is lawful, in order to avoid scandal,
and in order to maintain that Iwnestas (decorum)
which St. Paul requireth under all circumstances."
(Jan. 13th, 1524.) "Polygamy is not allowable
amongst Christians, except in cases of absolute ne-
cessity, as when a man is forced to separate from
a leprous wife, &c." . . . (March 21st, 1527.)
Having one day put the case to doctor Basilius,
whether a man, whose wife was afflicted with some
incurable malady, might take a concubine, and
receiving an answer in the affirmative, Luther ob-
served, " It would be of dangerous precedent, since
excuses might be daily invented for procuring di-
vorces." (a.d. 1539.)
Luther was greatly embarrassed by the land-
grave's message. All the theologians of Wittem-
berg assembled to draw up an answer, and the
result was a compromise. He was allowed a
double marriage, on condition that his second wife'
should not be publicly recognized. " Your highness
must be aware of the difference between establish-
ing a universal and granting an exceptional law.
. . . We cannot publicly sanction a plurality of
wives. . . . We pray your highness to consider the
dangers in which a man would stand who should
introduce a law that would disunite families, and
plunge them into endless law-suits. . . . Your
highness's constitution is weak, you sleep badly,
and your health requires every care. . . . The
great Scanderbeg often exhorted his soldiers to
chastity, saying that nothing was so injurious in
their calling as incontinence. . . . We pray your
highness seriously to take into consideration the
scandals, cares, labours, griefs, and infirmities
herem brought under your notice. ... If, never-
58
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1536—1545.
theless, your highness is fully resolved to take a
second wife, we are of opinion that the marriage
should be secret. . . . Given at Wittemberg, after
the festival of St. Nicholas, 1539. — Martin Luther,
Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, Antony
CoRviN, Adam, John Lening, Justin Wintfert,
Dyonisius Melanther."
It was hard for Luther, who, both as theologian
and as a father of a family, w"as identified with the
sanctity of the marriage tie, to declare that in virtue
of the Old Testament two wives might seat them-
selves, with their jealousies and their hates, at the
same domestic heai-th ; and he groaned under this
cross. " As to the Macedonian business, grieve not
overmuch, since things are come to that pass, that
neither joy nor sadness availeth. Why kill our-
selves ? Why allow sorrow to banish the thoughts
of him who has overcome all deaths and all sor-
rows ? Did not he who conquered the devil and
judged the prince of this world, at the self-same
time judge and conquer this scandal ? . . . Let
Satan triumph, and let us be neither chagrined nor
grieved, but let us rejoice in Christ, who will dis-
comfit all our enemies." (June 18th, 1540.) He
seems to have looked to the emperor's interfering.
" If Csesar and the empire will, as they perforce
must, put a stop to this scandal, an edict will soon
stay it, and prevent its being hereafter used as either
a right or an example." From this time forward,
Luther's letters, and those of Melanchthon, are full
of disgust and sadness.
On Luther's being asked for a letter of recom-
mendation to the court of Dresden, he replies, that
he has lost all credit and influence there ; in that
" worldly court," as he sometimes calls it. To a
friend (Lauterbach) he writes : " I will be present
at your marriage in mind, not in body, being hin-
dered, not only by pressure of business, but by the
fear of off'ending the Mamelukes and queen of the
kingdom (the duchess Catherine of Saxony ?) for
who is not offended with Luther's folly ?" " You
ask me, my dear Jonas, to write an occasional
word of comfort to you. But I stand much more
in need of your letters to revive me, who, like Lot,
have so much to endure in the midst of this infa-
mous and Satanic ingratitude, this hon'ible con-
tempt for the Lord's word. ... I must, then, see
Satan take possession of the hearts of those who
fancy that the chiefest seats in the kingdom of
Heaven are reserved for them alone !" The Pro-
testants were already beginning to relax from their
severity of manners, and the bagnios were re-
opened. " Better," exclaims Luther, "not to have
driven out Satan, than to bring him back in greater
force." (Sept. 13th, 1540.)
" The pope, the emperor, the Frenchman, and
Ferdinand, have despatched a magnificent em-
bassy to the Turks to demand peace .... and,
last of all, for fear of offending the eyes of the
Turks, the ambassadors have put themselves into
Turkish robes. I trust these are blessed signs of
the approaching end of all things !" (July 17th,
1545.)
To Jonas. " Hark in thy ears ! I shrewdly sus-
pect that we Lutherans shall be packed off to fight
the Turks single-handed. King Ferdinand has
removed the war-chest from Bohemia, and forbade
a single soldier to stir, and the emperor does
nothing ; as if it were settled that we should be
exterminated by the Turks." (Dec. 29th, 1542.)
" Nothing new here, except that the margrave of
Brandenburg is getting evil spoken of by every
one, with regard to the war in Hungary. They
speak just the same of Ferdinand. I descry so
many and such probable reasons for it, that I can-
not help believing there is horrible and deadly
treachery there." (Jan. 26th, 1542.) " I ask,
what will be the end of this horrible treachery
of the princes and kings 1" (Dec. 16th, 1543.)
" May God avenge us on the incendiaries ( Luther
speaks, almost every month, of fires occurring at
Wittemberg). Satan has devised a new plan for
getting rid of us. Our wine is poisoned, and lime
mixed with our milk. Twelve persons have been
rolled by poisoned wine at Jena. Perhaps they
died of excess of drink ; but at all events, it is
given out for certain that dealers have been de-
tected selling poisoned milk at Magdebui-g and
Northuse." (April, 1541.) He writes to Amsdorf,
on occasion of the plague, at Magdeburg : " What
you tell me of the alarm felt of the plague, reminds
me of what I observed some years since ; and I
am surprised to see that the more life in Christ
Jesus is preached, the stronger grows the fear of
death ; whether this fear were lessened, during
the reign of the pope, by a false hope of life, and
that now the true hope of life is placed before the
people, they feel how weak nature is to believe
in the conqueror of death, or that God tempts us
by these weaknesses, and allows Satan to grow
bolder and stronger on account of this alarm !
Whilst we beHeved in the pope, we were as di-unk-
ards, men asleep, or fools, mistaldng death for life,
that is, ignorant of the nature of death and of God's
wrath. Now that the light has shone upon us, and
that God's wrath is better known, nature has
shaken off" sleep and folly, and hence greater fear
than before, . . . Here I apply the passage of the
seventy-first Psalm, ' Cast me not away in the time
of age ; forsake me not when my strength faileth me.'
For I think that these are the latter days of
Christ, and the time of casting down ; that is,
the time of the last great assault of the devil,
as David, in his latter days, weakened by years,
would have fallen before the giant, had not Abishai
come to his aid. ... I have learnt almost all this
year to sing with St. Paul, ' As dying, and behold,
u-e lire ,-' and ' By your njoicing, which I have in
Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.' When he says
to the Corinthians, 'In deaths oft,' 'this was not
meditating or speculating on death, but the sensa-
tion of death itself, as if hope of life there were
none." (Nov. 20th, 1538.) "I trust that with
tkis rending of the world, Christ will hasten his
coming and crush the globe to atoms, tit fractus
illahatur orbis." (Feb. 12th, 1538.)
A.D. 1530—1546.
OF DOMESTIC LIFE.
69
BOOK THE FOURTH.
A.D. 1530— 154(;.
CHAPTER I.
Luther's conversations on domestic life, on wives
AND children, AND ON NATURE.
Let us pause in this sad history of the last years
of his public life, and retii'e with Luther into his
private life, seat ourselves at his table, by the side
of his wife, and in the midst of his children and
friends, and listen to the grave words of the pious
and tender father of a family.
" The man who insults preachers and women,
will never succeed well. From women proceed chil-
dren, the future heads of families and of the state.
To despise them, is to despise God and man."
" The Saxon law is too hard in giving the widow a
chair and her distaff only. The first we should
interpret to mean, a house ; the second, her main-
tenance. We pay our lacquey ; what do I say,
we give more to a beggar 1" " There can be no
doubt, that women who die in the faith in child-
bearing, are saved, because they die fulfilling the
end for which God created them." " In the Low
Countries, the priest, on his induction, chooses
some little girl as his betrothed, in sign of hon-
ouring the marriage state."
Luther being asked whether a Christian
preacher, who is bound to suffer imprisonment and
persecution for the word's sake, ought not much
more to do without marriage ? replied: '' It is
easier to endure imprisonment than desire, as I
know in my own person. The more I strove to
macerate and subdue the flesh, the more I lusted.
Even though gifted with chastity, one ought to
marry to spite the pope. . . . Had I been seized
with a fatal illness, I should have wished to sum-
mon some pious maid to my death-bed, and wed her,
presenting her with two silver goblets as a wedding-
gift and morrow's present {morgengabe), in order to
show how I honoured marriage." To a friend he
writes: " If you lust, marry. You want a wife at
once beautiful, pious, and rich. Well, you can have
one painted, with red cheeks and white limbs, and
such are the most pious; but they are worth nothing
for kitchen or couch. ... No one will ever have to
repent rising early and marrying young. ... It
is no more possible to do without a wife than with-
out eating and drinking. Conceived, nourished,
borne within the body of woman, our flesh is mainly
hers, and it is impossible for us ever to separate
wholly from her. . . . Had I wished to make love,
I should have taken thirteen years ago to Ave
Schonfeldin, who is now the wife of doctor Basilius,
the Prussian physician. At that time I did not
love my Catherine, whom I suspected of being
proud and haughty ; but it was God's will ; it was
his will that I should take pity on her, and I have
cause, God be praised, to be satisfied."
" The greatest grace God can bestow is to have a
good and pious husband, with whom you may live
in peace, to whom you can trust every thing, even
your body and your life, and by whom you have
little children. Catherine, thou hast a pious hus-
band, who loves thee; thou art an empress. Thanks
be to God!"
Alluding to immorality in men, Luther observed:
" Let them know that they are, after all, but des-
pisers of the sex, who wei-e not created for their
brutal pleasures. . . 'Tis a great thing for a young
girl to be always loved, and the devil but seldom
allows it. . . My hostess of Eisenach said well,
when I was a student there: ' There is no sveeter
pleasure upon earth than to be loved by a woman.'' "
" On St. Martin's day (doctor Martin Luther's
birth-day), master Ambrosius Brend came to ask
him his niece in marriage. . . . One day, surprising
them in close conversation, he burst out laughing,
and said: 'I am not surprised at a lover having so
much to say to his mistress; can they ever tire?
We must not put them out of the way; they have a
privilege above law and custom !' When he be-
trothed her to him, he addressed him as follows: —
' Sir, and dear friend, I give you this young maid,
such as God in his goodness gave her unto me. I
confide her to your hands. May God bless you,
sanctify your union, and make it happy !' "
" Being present at the marriage of John Lu'ffte's
daughter, he led her to her bed after supper, and
said to the husband, that, according to common
custom, he was to be master of the house ....
when the wife was not in it; and, in token of this,
he took one of the husband's shoes, and put it on
the top of the bed, showing that he so assumed do-
minion and government."
Being one day in very high spirits at table, " Be
not scandalized," he said, " to see me so merry. I
have heard a great deal of bad news to-day, and
have just read a letter violently abusing me. Our
affairs must be going on well, since the devil is
storming so !"
" Were I to make love again, I would have an
obedient wife carved for me in stone ; I should
despair of getting one any other way." " Strange
thoughts come into one's head the first year of
mai'riage. When at table, one says to oneself,
' Just now thou wert alone, now thou art two '
(selbatider). On awaking, one sees another head
by the side of one's own. The first year my
Catherine used to sit by me whilst I was studying,
and, not knowing what to say, she asked me, ' Sir
doctor, in Prussia, is not the maitre d'hotel the
margrave's brother V " " There should be no
delay between the betrothals and the marriage. . .
Friends interpose obstacles All my best
friends kept crying, 'Don't take her, take an-
other.' " " A sure sign that God is hostile to the
papacy is, that he has refused it the blessing of
corporeal fruit (childi'en). . . . When Eve was
brought before Adam, he was filled with the Holy
Ghost, and gave her the most beautiful and glorious
of names, calling her Eca, that is, mother of all
living. He did not call her his wife, but mother,
mother of all living. This is woman's glory, and
60
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D, 1530—1546.
most precious ornament. She is Fons omnium
■viventium, the source of all human life ; a brief
plirase, but such as neither Demosthenes nor
Cicero could have expressed. The Holy Ghost
here speaks by our first father, and having passed
so noble a eulogy on marriage, it is but right in us
to extenuate the weaknesses of women. No more
did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, despise mar-
riage. He is himself born of woman, which is a
high testimony to marriage."
" We find an image of man-iage in all creatures,
not only in birds, beasts, and fishes, but in trees and
stones too. Every one knows that there are trees,
like the apple and the pear tree, which are, as it
were, husband and wife, which desiderate each
other, and which thrive more when they are planted
together. The same is observable of stones, espe-
cially precious stones, such as the coral, emerald,
and others. The sky, also, is the husband of the
earth, vivifying it by the warmth of the sun, by the
rain and the wind, and so leading it to bear all sorts
of plants and fruits."
The doctor's little children were standing before
the table, anxiously watching the fishes that were
being served up, when he remarked, — "If you
wish to see the image of a soul in the fruition of
hope, there it is. Ah ! would we could look forward
to the life to come with the same delight." His
littlegirl, Madeleine, being brought in to sing to her
cousin the song beginning. The pope invokes the em-
peror and the kings, &c., and refusing, notwith-
standing coaxing and threats, the doctor said,
" Nothing good comes of force : without grace, the
works of the law are valueless." " I see nothing
contradictory in the injunction, Sei've the Lord with
fear and rejoice iclth trcmblhuj. My little John does
so with regard to me, but I cannot with regard to
God. When writing, or otherwise busied, he will
begin a little song, and if he sing too loud, and I
check him, he will go on, but to himself, and with
a touch of fear. So God wishes us to be always
cheerful, yet with awe and reserve." One new-
year's day, he and his wife were exceedingly put
out at being unable to still the baby, who kept on
screaming more than an hour ; at last, he said,
" These are the vexations of married life. . . .
This is the reason none of the Fathers has written
any thing remarkably good on the subject. Jerome
has S|)oken degradingly, I should almost say in an
anti-Christian spirit, of marriage. ... St. Augus-
tin on the contrary." , . . His wife placing his
youngest child in his arms, he observed, " Would I
had died at this age ; willingly would I forego any
honour I may obtain in this world to die an in-
fant !" The child dirtying him, he said, " Oh !
how much more must our Lord endure with us
than a mother with her child." He addressed his
baby with, " Thou art our Lord's innocent little
fool, living under grace and not under the law.
Thou art without fear or anxiety, and all that thou
doest is well done." " Children are the hapiiiest.
We old fools are ever distressing ourselves with
disputes about the word, constantly asking our-
selves, ' Is it true ? Is it possible ? How can it
be possible V Ciiildren, in their pure and guile-
less faith, have no doubts on matters appertaining
to salvation. . . . Like them, we ought to trust for
salvation to the simple word ; but the devil is
ever tlirowing some stumbling-block in oiu' way."
Another time, as his wife was giving the breast to
his little Martin, he said, " The pope and duke
George hate this child, and all belonging to me, as
do their partizans and the devil. However, they
give no uneasiness to the dear child, and he does not
concern himself what such powerful enemies may do.
He sticks to the teat, or crows laughingly aloud,
and leaves them to grumble their fill." One day,
that Spalatln and Lenhart Beier, pastor of Zwickau,
were with him, he pointed to his little Martin
playing with a doll, and said, " Even such were
man's thoughts in Paradise, simple, innocent, and
free from malice or hypocrisy ; he must have been
like this child when he speaks of God and is so
sure of him. What must have been Abraham's
feelings when he consented to offer up his only
son ! He said nothing of it to Sarah ; he could
not ! Of a verity, I should dispute God's com-
mands were he to order me such a thing." On
this, the doctor's wife broke in with, " I will not
believe that God can ask any one to kill his own
child."
" Ah ! how my heart sighed after mine own, when
I lay sick to death at Smalkalde. I thought that
I should never more see my wife or little ones;
and how agonizing was the thought ! . . . . There
is no one who can so overcome the flesh, as not to
feel this bent of nature. Great is the force of the
social tie which knits man and wife together."
It is touching to see how each thing that at-
tracted his notice led Luther to pious reflections
on the goodness of God, on the state of man before
the fall, and on the life to come; as, on Dr. Jonas
laying on his table a fine bough laden with cherries,
his wife's delight on serving up a dish of fish from
their own pond, the mere sight of a rose, &c. . . .
On the 9th of April, 1539, as the doctor was in
his garden, gazing attentively at the trees, resplen-
dent with flowers and foliage, he exclaimed with
admiration, " Glory be to God, who thus calls to
life inanimate creation in tlie spring. Look at
those graceful branches, already big with fruit.
Fine image this of man's resurrection : winter is
death ; summer the resurrection !" After a violent
storm on the evening of the 18th of April, 1539,
followed by a kindly rain, which restored the ver-
dure of the fields and trees, he exclaimed, looking
up to heaven, " This is thy gift, O my God, and to
us ingrates, full of wickedness and covetousness.
Thou art a God of goodness ! This was no work
of Satan's; no, 'twas a beneficent thunder, shaking
the earth, and opening it to make it bear its fruits
and spread a perfume similar to that diffused by
the prayer of the pious Christian." Another day,
walking on the Leipsic road, and seeing the whole
plain covered with the finest wheat, Luther ex-
claimed, with exceeding fervour, " 0 God of good-
ness, this fruitful year is thy gift! Not for our
piety is this, but to glorify thy holy name. Grant,
O my God, that we may amend our lives and in-
crease in thy Word! With thee all is miracle.
Thy voice brings out of the earth, and even out of
the arid sand, those plants and those beauteous
ears of wheat which gladden the sight. O, my
Father, give all thy children their daily bread !"
One evening, noticing a little bird perched on a
tree as if to take up its roost for the night, he said,
" This little thing has chosen its shelter, and is
going peacefully to sleep ; it does not disturb itself
with thoughts of where it shall rest to-morrow,
but composes itself tranquilly on its little branch,
A.D. 1530—1546.
OF THE BIBLE, FATHERS, SCHOOLMEN.
61
and leaves God to think for it." Towards evening,
two birds began to build their nest in the doctor's
garden, but were frequently disturbed by the
passers by: "Ah!" he exclaimed, "dear little
birds, don't fly away; 1 wish you well with all my
heart, if you would only believe me ! Even so
we refuse to trust in God, who, far from wishing
our harm, has given his own Son for us."
CHAPTER II.
TBE BIBLE.— THE FATHERS. —THE SCHOOLMEN.— THE
POPE.— COUNCILS.
Doctor Martin Luther had written with chalk on
the wall, behind his stove, the following woi-ds: —
" He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful
also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is
unjust also in much." (Luke xvi. 10.) " The little
infant Jesus (he showed him painted on the wall)
is sleeping in the arms of Mary, his mother. He
will awake one day, and demand an account of what
we have done." One day that Dr. Jonas was by,
whilst Luther was being shaved, the latter said to
him : " Original sin is within us, like the beard. We
take it off to-day, and have a smooth face; to-mor-
row, it is grown again, and it will not cease growing
whilst we live. Just so, original sin cannot be ex-
tirpated in us; but springs up our life long. Never-
theless, we ought to resist it with all our strength,
and cut it off without delay." " Human nature is
so corrupt as not even to feel a want of heavenly
things. It is like a new-born child, to whom one
would promise in vain all the treasures and plea-
sures the earth yields ; the child is without a
thought, and knows but its mother's breast. In
like manner, when the Gospel speaks to us of
eternal life through Christ Jesus, we turn a deaf
ear, harden om-selves in the flesh, and indulge in
frivolous and perishable thoughts. Human nature
does not comprehend, does not even feel, the mortal
ill which weighs it down." " In divine things, the
Father is the Grammar, for he imparts words, and
is the source whence flow good, pure, and harmo-
nious sayings. The Son is Loijio, and suggests ar-
rangement, order, and sequence of ideas. The Holy
Ghost is Rhetoric, states, presses home, enlarges,
and gives life and strength, so as to impress and
hold the hearers' hearts." " The Trinity occurs
throughout creation. In the sun are substance,
light, and heat ; in rivers, substance, cui-rent,
and force. So, in the arts : in astronomy are
motion, light, and influence; in music, the three
notes, re, mi, fa, &c. The schoolmen have neg-
lected these important signs for silly trifles." " The
decalogue is the doctrine of doctrines ; the creed, the
history of histories ; the Lord's prayer, the prayer of
prayers ; the sacraments, the ceremonies of cere-
monies."
On his being asked whether those who had lived
in the darkness of popery, and had not known the
blessing of the Gospel, could be saved ? Luther re-
plied: " I know not, save, perhaps, through bap-
tism. I have seen the cross held out to many
monks, on their death-bed, as was then the custom,
and they may have been saved by their faith in
Christ's merits and sufferings." " Cicero is far
superior in his moral doctrine to Aristotle, and
was a wise and laborious man, who did and who
suffered much. I hope that our Lord will be
merciful unto him and all like unto him ; albeit it
belongs not to us to speak with certainty. That
God should not make exceptions and establish
distinctions between pagans, is what one cannot
say. There will be a new heaven and a new earth
much larger and vaster than those of our day."
Being asked whether the offended party ought to
seek pardon of the offender, Luther replied, " No ;
Jesus Christ himself has set us no example, and
has left us no command of the kind. It is enough
to pardon offences in one's heart ; and publicly, if
convenient, and prayed so to do. I, indeed, once
went to ask pardon of two persons who had offended
me, but they happened to be from home ; and
I now thank God that I was not allowed to execute
my purpose." Sighing one day at the thought of
the sectaries who despised God's word, " Ah !"
he exclaimed, " were I a great poet, I would write
a magnificent poem on the utility and efficacy of the
divine word. Without it. . . . For many years
I have read the Bible twice a year; 'tis a great and
mighty tree, each word of which is a branch. 1
have shaken them all, so curious was I to know
what each branch bore, and each time I have
shaken off a couple of pears or apples." " For-
merly, under papal rules, men used to go on pil-
grimages to the saints, to Rome, to Jerusalem, to
St. James of Compostella, to expiate their sins.
Now we may make Christian pilgrimages in the
faith. When we read attentively the prophets, the
psalms, and the gospels, we peregrinate, not through
the holy city, but through our thoughts and hearts,
to God. That is visiting the true promised land,
and the paradise of life eternal." " What are the
saints compared with Christ ? Nothing more than
small drops of night-dew on the beard of the
bridegroom and in the curls of his hair."
Luther did not like the miracles to be dwelt
upon, considering this kind of proof as secondary.
" The convincing proofs are in God's word. Our
opponents read the translated Bible much more
than we. I believe that duke George has read it
more carefully than all the nobles on our side
together. ' Provided,' I hear he has said, ' pro-
vided the monk have finished the translation of
the Bible, he may be off when he likes.' " He
used to say that Melanchthon had forced him to
translate the New Testament.
" Let our adversaries fume and rage. God has
not opposed a wall of stone or a mountain of brass
to the waves of the sea ; a bank of sand has been
enough."
" In my early days, whilst a monk, I used to be
fond of reading my Bible, but to no use ; I merely
made Christ a Moses. Now I have found my
beloved Christ. May I be thankful, and stedfast,
and suffer for his sake what I may be called upon
to suffer." " Why do we teach and keep the ten
commandments ? The reason is, that nowhere is
the natural law so well arranged and laid down as
in Moses. I wish we had borrowed from him in
temporal things as well : such as the laws with
regard to the bill of divorcement, the jubilee, the
year of release, tithes, &c., the world would be
all the better governed. . . . So, the Romans took
their Twelve Tables from the Greeks. ... As
regards the Sabbath or Sunday, there is no neces-
sity for keeping it ; but if we do, it ought to be,
not on account of Moses' commandment, but be-
62
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1530—1546.
cause nature teaches us from time to time to take
a day of rest, in order that men and animals may
recruit their strength, and that we may attend the
preaching of God's word. Since there is now-a-
days a general movement towards restoring all
things, as if the day of the universal restoration
were come, it has come into my head to try
whether Moses also cannot be restored, and the
rivers recalled to their source. I have taken care
to treat every subject in the simplest fashion, and
to avoid mystical interpretations as they are called.
. . . I see no other reason for God's choosing to
form the Jewish people by these ceremonies, than
his knowledge of their aptness to be caught by
externals. To prevent these being empty phan-
toms and mere images, he added his word to give
them weight and substance, and render them grave
and serious matters. I have subjoined to each
chapter brief allegories ; not that I set much store
by them, but to anticipate the mania many have
for allegorical writing ; as we perceive in Jerome,
Origen, and other ancient writers an unfortunate
and sterile habit of devising allegories to recom-
mend morality and works, whereas it is the word
and faith that ought to be insisted on." (April,
1525.)
" My prayer is the Pater Noster ; and I am in
the habit of blending with it something from the
Psalms, in order to confound false teachers, and
cover them with shame. There is no prayer com-
parable to the Pater ; I prefer it to any Psalm *."
" I frankly own that I know not whether or no I
am master of the full meaning of the Psalms ;
although I have no doubts about my giving their
correct sense. One man will be mistaken in some
passages ; another, in others. I see things which
Augustin overlooked ; and otliers, I am aware,
will see things which I miss. Who will dare to
assert that he has completely understood a single
Psalm 1 Our life is a beginning and a pi'ogress ;
not a consummation. He is the best, who comes
nearest to the Spirit. There are stages in life and
action, why not in understanding ? The apostle says,
that we proceed from knowledge to knowledge."
Of the New Testament. " The Gospel of St. John
is the true and pure Gospel, the principal Gospel,
because it contains more of Jesus Christ's own
words than the rest. In like mannei', the Epistles
of St. Paul and St. Peter, are far above (?) the
Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke.
In fine, St. John's Gospel and his First Epistle, St.
Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Romans,
Galatians, and Ephesians, and St. Peter's First
Epistle, are the books which show thee Jesus
Christ, and which teach thee all that it is necessary
and useful for thee to know, though thou wert
never to see any other book." He did not con-
sider either the Epistle to the Hebrews or the
Epistle of St. James of apostolical authority. He
says of that of St. Jude : " No one can deny that
this Epistle is an extract from or copy of the
Second of St. Peter ; the words are almost identi-
cal. Jude speaks of the apostles as if he had been
their disciple, and that they were dead ; and he
cites texts and events nowhere to be found in
Scripture."
Luther's opinion on the Apocalypse is remark-
able : " Every one," he says, " must form his own
judgment on this woi'k according to his lights and
* So says Montaigne in his Essays.
gifts. I do not wish to force my opinion on any
one, but simply speak as I think. I look upon it
as being neither apostolic nor prophetic." . . And,
in another passage, " Many of the fathers have re-
jected this book ; and it is free to all to think of it
as they shall be moved. For my own part, I can-
not take to this work. One reason alone would
give me a distaste to it ; which is, that Jesus
Christ is neither adored nor preached in it such as
we know him."
Of the Fathe7-s. " You may read Jerome for the
sake of the history ; of faith, good true religion, and
doctrine, there is not a word in his works. I have
ah'eady proscribed Origen. Chrysostom is no au-
thority with me. Basil is but a monk ; I would
not give a straw for him. Melanchthon's Apology is
beyond the writings of all the doctors of the Church,
not excepting Augustin ; Hilary and Theophylact
are good, Ambrose also ; he walks steadily as to the
most essential article, the pardon of sins. Bernard,
as a preacher, eclipses all the doctors; in argu-
ment, he is quite another man, and grants too
much to the law and to fi'ee-will. Bonaventura is
tlie best of the scholastic theologians. Amongst the
fathers, Augustin holds, incontestably, the first
place; Ambrose, the second; Bernard, the third.
Tertullian is a true Carlstadt. Cyril has the finest
sentences. Cyprian the martyr, is a poor theolo-
gian. Theophylact is the best interpreter of St.
Paul." — (Arguments to prove that antiquity does
not add to authority) : " We see how bitterly St.
Paul complains of the Corinthians and Galatians;
even amongst the apostles, Christ found a traitor
in Judas.'' " There is never anything conclusive in
the writings of the Fathers on the Bible; they leave
the reader suspended betwixt heaven and earth.
Read Chrysostom, the best rhetoi'ician, and speaker
of all." He observes, that the Fathers said nothing
of justification by grace during their life, but be-
lieved in it at their death. " This was more prudent,
in order not to encourage mysticism or discourage
good works. The dear Fathers have lived better
than they have written." He eulogises the history
of St. Epiphanius, and the poems of Prudentius.
" Of all, Augustin and Hilary have written with
most clearness and ti'uth ; the rest must be read cum
judicio (with allowance). Ambrose was mixed up
with worldly matters, as I am now; being obliged
to busy myself in the consistory with marriage
matters, more than with God's word. . . . Bona-
ventura has been called the seraphic ; Thomas, the
angelic ; Scot, the subtle ; Martin Luther will be
named the arch-heretic." Observing a portrait of
St. Augustin in a book, representing him with a
monk's cowl, Luther remarked, " They do the holy
man wrong, for he lived just as the world about
him, and used silver spoons and cups, not even se-
cluding himself like the monks.'' " Macarius, An-
tony, and Benedict have done the Church great
and signal injury with their monkery ; and I think
they will be placed much lower in heaven than a
pious, God-fearing citizen, father of a family. St.
Augustin pleases me more than all the rest. The
doctrine he teaches is pure, and regulated with
Christian humility, by Holy Scripture. Augustin
is favourable to marriage. He speaks well of the
bishops who were the pastors of his day ; but years,
and his disputes with the Pelagians, embittered and
distressed him at the last. . . Had he witnessed the
scandals of the papacy, he certainly would not have
A.D. 1530—1540. OF THE SCHOOLMEN, THE POPE, AND COUNCILS.
G3
allowed them. He is the first Father of the Church
who wrote ou the subject of original sin." After
having spoken of St. Augustin, Luther adds, " But
since God has given me grace to understand Paul,
I have not ■ been able to relish any doctors ; they
have all become dwarfs m my eyes." " I know
none of the Fathers whom I so much dislike as St.
Jerome. He writes only on fasting, diet, virginity,
&c., not a word on faith. Dr. Staupitz was wont
to say, ' I should like to know how Jerome could
be saved.' "
" The nominalists are a sect of the upper schools
to which I used to belong; they are opposed to the
Thomists, Scotists, and Albertists. The name they
give themselves is Occamists. They are the newest
sect of all, and, at present, the most powerful, es-
pecially at Paris." Luther thinks highly of Peter
Lombard's Master of Sentences ; but considers that
the schoolmen in general laid too much stress on
free-will and too little on gi-ace. " Gersou alone,
of all the doctors, has made mention of spiritual
temptations. All the rest, Gregory of Nazianzen,
Augustin, Scotus, Thomas, Ricliard, Occam, were
conscious of corporal temptations only. Gerson
alone has written of discoui-agement. The Church,
in propoi'tion to her advancing years, cannot but
experience spiritual temptations of the kind; and
we live in this age of the Church. William of
Paris, too, felt such temptations iu a degree; but
the schoolmen never attained the knowledge of the
catechism. Gerson is the only one who reassures
and revives consciences. . . . He has saved many
poor souls from despair by lessening and extenuat-
ing the law, yet, so as that the law shall remain.
But Christ does not tap the cask, he breaks it in.
He says, ' Thou must not trust in the law, nor rely
upon it, but upon me, upon Christ. If thou art
not good, I am.' " " Dr. Staupitz one day speaking
to me of Andrew Zachary, who is said to have
overcome John Huss in disputation, told me that
Dr. Proles of Gotha seeing a portrait of Zachary,
in which he was represented with a rose in his
bonnet, exclaimed, ' God defend me from ever
wearing such a rose, for he overcame John Huss
by a trick, by means of a falsified Bible. You will
find in the thirty-fourth of Ezekiel, Behold, I
myself will visit and punish my shepherds * ; to which
they had added, ' and not the people.' The mem-
bers of the council showed him the text in his
own Bible, which had been falsified as well as
the rest, and then drew the conclusion, it is not
your business to punish the pope, as God takes it
upon himself. And so the holy man was con-
demned and burnt.' " " Master John Agricola
reading one of John Huss's works, full of spirit,
of resignation, and of fervour, in which you saw
how in his prison he suffered martyrdom from
the stone, and was exposed to the rebukes of the
emperor Sigismund, Dr. Luther admired such
spirit and courage It is most unjust," he
exclaimed, " to call John Huss and me heretics. . .
John Huss died, not as an anabaptist, but as a
Christian. We discern Christian weakness in him ;
but, at the same time, strength from God arouses
his soul and buoys him up. It is sweet and touch-
ing to see the struggle betwixt the flesh and the
spirit in Christ and in Huss Constance is at
• In our version, " Behold, I am against the shepherd.s,
and I will require my flock at their hands . . . that they
may not be meat for them."
the present day a poor, wretched city. God, I
opine, has chastised it. . . . John Huss was burnt;
and I, too, with God's will, believe that I shall be
put to death. He rooted out some thorns from
Christ's vineyard by only attacking the scandals
of the papacy. But I, Dr. Martin Luther, coming
into a richly-soiled and well-tilled field, have at-
tacked the pope's doctrine and overthrown it. . . .
John Huss was the seed which had to be harrowed
in the earth and die, to spring up afterwards and
grow with renewed strength. . ."
One day Luther improvised at table the follow-
ing verse: —
" Pestis erani vivens, moriens ero mors tua, Papa*."
"-^ " The head of antichrist is at once the pope and
the Turk. The pope is antichrist's spirit, the Turk
the flesh."
" It is my poor and humble state (not to speak
of the justice of my cause) which has been the
pope's misfortune. ' If,' he said to himself, ' I have
defended my doctrine against so many kings and
emperors, why should I fear a simple monk V Had
he looked upon me as a dangerous enemy, he
might have crushed me at the outset. ... I con-
fess that I have often been too violent, but not
with regard to the papacy. One ought to have a
language on purpose to use against it, every word
of which should be a thunderbolt. . . . The papists
are confounded and conquered by the testimonies of
Scripture. Thank God I know their error under
its every aspect, from the alpha to the omega. Yet,
even now, when they confess the Scriptures to be
against them, the splendour and majesty of the
pope sometimes dazzle me, and I attack him with
trembling. . . . The pope said to himself, ' Shall I
give way to a monk, who seeks to despoil me
of my crown and my majesty ? A fool if I do !'
I would give both my hands to believe as firmly, as
surely in Jesus Christ, as the pope believes Jesus
Christ to be nothing. . . . Others, as Erasmus and
John Huss, have attacked the morals of the popes.
But I have pulled down the two pillars on which
the popedom rested — vows and private masses."
Of Councils. " Councils are not for the ordering
of faith, but of discipline."
Dr. Martin Luther raised his eyes one day to
heaven, sighed, and exclaimed, " Ah ! for a general,
free, and truly Christian council ! God can do it ;
'tis his business ; he knows and holds in his hand
the inmost thoughts of men."
" When Peter Paul Vergerius, the pope's legate,
came to Wittemberg in the year 1533, and that I
called upon him, he cited and summoned me to ap-
pear at the council. ' I will,' I said, adding, ' As
for you papists, you labour in vain. If you hold a
council, you do not take mto consideration the
sacraments, justification by faith, good works, but
only babbling and childish matters, such as the
length of robes, the width of priests' girdles, &c.'
He turned away from me, leant his head on his
hand, and said to a person with him, ' Of a truth
this man goes to the I'oot of the matter."' It
being asked when the pope would convene a coun-
cil ? " There will be none," said Luther, "before
the last day, and then our Lord God will himself
hold a council." Luther's advice was, not to
* "Pope, I was thy plague living; dying, I shall be thy
64
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
A.D. 1530—1546.
refuse attending a council, but to require it to be
free. " If this be denied, we cannot have a better
excuse."
Of Ecclesiastical Property. Luther wished it to
be applied to the support of schools, and poor theo-
logical students. He deplores the spoliation of the
churches, and predicts that princes will soon
quarrel for the spoil. " The pope is now lavishing
ecclesiastical property on catholic princes, in order
to buy friends and allies. ... It is not so much
our princes of the confession of Augsburg who
pillage the church, as Ferdinand, the emperor, and
the archbishop of Mentz. The Bavarians, who
have rich abbeys, are the greatest robbers. My
gracious lord and the landgrave have only poor
monasteries of mendicant monks in their territories.
At the diet, it was proposed to place the monas-
teries at the disposal of the emperor, who would
have garrisoned them. I said, ' You must first
hrinxf all the monasteries together into one spot. Who
would suffer the emperorh officers in his territories ? '
The archbishop of Mentz was the instigator of the
proposition." In answer to a letter of the king of
Denmark's, asking for his advice, Luther disap-
proves of the annexation of church property to the
crown. "Look," he says, "at our prince, John
Frederick, how he applies the property of the
church to the support of pastors and pi'ofessors."
" The proverb is in the right, ' Priests' goods do no
good.' {pfaffenijut raffemjut.) Burchard Hund, coun-
cillor to John, elector of Saxony, was wont to say,
' We nobles have annexed church lands to our
fiefs, and the church lands have devoured our fiefs,
so that we now have neither the one nor the
other.' " Luther adds the fable of the fox, who
revenges the loss of his cubs by burning down the
tree, with the eagle's nest and eaglets in it. An
old tutor of Ferdinand's son (king of the Romans),
named Severus, was telling Luther the story of the
dog that fought for his piece of meat, yet took his
share of it, when the other dogs snatched it from
him. " Exactly what the emperor is now doing,"
exclaimed Luther, " with the estates of the church."
(Alluding to Utrecht and Liege.)
Of Cardinals and Bishops. " In Italy, France,
England, and Spain, the bishops are commonly the
royal councillors, the reason being, that they are
poor. But in Germany, where they are rich,
powerful, and enjoy great consideration, the bishops
govern in their own name. ... I shall strive to
the utmost to preserve the canonries and small
bishoprics, so as to endow out of their revenues
preachers and pastors for the towns. The large
bishoprics shall be secularised." Dining with the
elector of Saxony on Ascension-day, and it having
been settled that the bishops were to preserve their
authoi'ity, provided they abjured the pope, Luther
said, " Our people shall examine them, and shall
ordain them by imposition of hands. This is the
way I am bishop." The origin of monks being
stai'ted in the disputations at Heidelberg, the
reply was, " God having made priests, the devil
wished to imitate him, but made the tonsure
too great, and thence monks." "Monkery will
never be re-established so long as the doctrine of
justification shall be understood in its pui'ity."
Monks were formerly so highly esteemed, that the
pope feared them more than kings and bishops ;
for they had the common people in their hands.
The monks were the pope's best fowlers. The
king of England gains nothing by no longer recog-
nizing the pope as the head of Christendom ; he
only torments the body, whilst strengthening the
soul of the papacy." (Henry VIII. had not yet
suppressed the monasteries.)
CHAPTER III.
OP SCHOOLS, UNIVERSITIES, AND THE LIBERAL ARTS.
" Schools ought to supply pastors, for edification
and the support of the church. Schools and pas-
tors are better than councils."
" I hope, if the world goes on, that the univer-
sities of Erfurth and Leipsic will revive and flou-
rish, provided they adopt sound views of theology,
as they seem disposed to do ; but some will have
to go to sleep first. I was at first surprised that a
university should have been established here, at
Wittemberg. Erfurth is excellently situated for
the purpose. There must be a town on the spot,
even though the present, which God foi'bid, should
be burnt down. This university was formerly so
renowned, that all others were considered only
small schools in comparison. But now its glories
have disappeared, and it is altogether dead."
" Masters were formerly put forward and honoured;
torches used to be borne before them. Never was
joy in the world comparable to that. Taking a
doctor's degree was also made a high festival of ;
one paraded roxmd the town on horseback, and
dressed oneself more carefully and ostentatiously
than usual. All that is over ; but I wish these
good customs were revived." "Wo to Germany,
who neglects schools, despises them, and allows
them to go to decay ! Wo to the archbishop of
Mentz and Erfurth, who might with a word resus-
citate the universities of those two cities, and who
leaves them desolate and deserted ! One nook of
Germany, that in which we are, still, thanks to
God, flourishes in purity of doctrine and culture of
the liberal arts. The papists will be for rebuilding
the fold, when the wolf shall have eaten the sheep.
It is the bishop of Mentz's fault, who is a scourge
to schools, and all Germany ; and so is he justly
punished for it. His face is the hue of death, like
clay tempered with blood."
" The most celebrated and best school is at
Paris, in France. It has twenty thousand stu-
dents and upwards. The theologians there have
the pleasantest spot in the whole city ; being a
street to themselves, with gates at each end : it is
called the Sorbonne, a name derived, I fancy, from
the fruit of the service tree (Sorhus), which grows
by the Dead Sea, and which, beautiful without, ai'e
only ashes within. Even so the University of
Paris shows a goodly multitude, but is the mother
of many errors. In disputing, they bawl like
drunken peasants, in Latin and in French ; so that
the auditors are obliged to stamp with their feet
to silence them. Before one can take one's de-
gree as doctor of theology, one is obliged to have
been a student of their sophistical and futile logic
for ten years. The respondent must sit a whole
day, and dispute with every comer, from six in the
morning to six in the evening." " At Bourges, in
France, at the public creation of doctors in theo-
logy, which takes place in the metropolitan church
there, each doctor has a net given him ; as a sign,
A.D. 1530— 154G.
OF EDUCATION, LANGUAGES, GRAMMAR.
C5
seemingly, that their business is to catch men."
" We, thanks to God, have universities wliieh have
embraced tlie woi-d of God, and many excellent pri-
vate schools besides, which display good dispositions,
as those at Zwickau, Torgau, Wittemberg, Gotha,
Eisenach, Deveuter, &c."
Extract from Luther^s Treatise on Education. "Do-
mestic education is insufficient. The magistracy
ought to superintend the education of the young,
and the establishment of schools is one of their
chief duties. Public offices, too, should only be
entrusted to the most learned. So important is the
study of tongues, that the devil fears it, and
seeks to extinguish it. Is it not through this study
that we have re-discovered the true doctrine ? The
first thing Christ gave to his apostles was the gift of
tongues." Luther complains that Latin is no
longer known in the monasteries, and hardly Gei'-
man. " For my own part, if I ever have children,
and my fortune permits it, I will make them mas-
ters of tongues, and of history, and have them
taught music and mathematics as well ;" on this
he branches forth into a eulogium on poets and
historians. " Children should at least be sent, an
hour or two daily to school ; and the rest of their
time be employed in the house, or in learning some
trade." " There ought to be schools for girls like-
wise." " Public libraries ought to be established,
and furnished at first with theological works, in
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German ; next, with
books to form the style, as the orators and poets, it
matters not whether they be Christian or pagan ;
then works on the liberal and mechanical arts ;
legal and medical works ; then, annals, chronicles,
and histories, iu the languages in which they were
written ; these are the works which should hold
the first place in a library."
Of Languages. " The Greeks, compared with the
Hebrews, have a number of good and pleasing
words, but have no sentences. The Hebrew lan-
guage is the richer; it does not beg, as Greek, Latin,
and German do ; and is not forced to recur to
compound words. The Hebrews drink at the
source; the Greeks from the stream; the Latins
from the bog." " I have little facility in Latin,
brought up as I was in the barbarism of scholastic
teaching." (Nov. 12th, 1544.) " 1 follow no par-
ticular dialect of German; but use the common
tongue, so as to be understood in Upper and
Lower Germany. I model myself on the usage of
the chancery court of Saxony, which is followed by
all in Germany, in their public acts, whether kings,
princes, or imperial cities, so that it has become
the general tongue. Thus the emperor Maximilian
and the elector Frederic of Saxony have reduced
the German dialects to one fixed tongue. The
language of the Marches is still sweeter than that
of Saxony."
Of G-raimnars. " Grammar is one thing, the
Hebrew language another. The Jews have, for
the most part, lost the Hebrew language and
positive grammar, which have declined with their
state itself and with their understanding, as Isaiah
says (ch. xxix.) The rabbis are no authority in
saci'ed matters; they torture and do violence to
etymology and construction, because they desire to
force the matter by the words, to subject it to the
words; whereas it is the matter which ought to
command them. You see similar disputes between
the Ciceronians and other Latinists. For my part,
I am neither Latinist nor grammarian, still less
Ciceronian; yet side with those who lay claim to
the latter title. And so, in sacred literature, I
would prefer being simply Mosaic, Davidie, or
Isaiahic, to being a Hebrew Kimchi, or like any
other rabbi." (a.d. 1537.) " I regret not having
more time to devote to the study of poets and i-he-
toricians; I had bought a Homer in order to become
Greek." (March 29th, 1523.) " If I were to write
a treatise on logic, I would reject every foreign
word, as propositio, si/Uogismvs,euthi/mema, exemjjlum,
&c., and give them German synonyms. . . . They
who introduce new words ought also to introduce
new things, as Scot with his realiti/, his hiccity ;
and as the Anabaptists and preachers of sedition
with their Besprengung, Entgrohitng, Gelassenheit.
Let us beware, then, of all who study to devise
new and unusual words." Luther cited the fable
of the lion's court, and said, " That after the Bible,
he knew no better books than ^sop's fables and
Cato's works, and that Donatus seemed to him the
best grammarian. These fables are not the work of
any one man; many great minds have devoted
themselves to their composition at each epoch of
the world."
Of Men of Learning. " In a few years, they will
not be to be found. You may dig to unearth
them, but to no purpose ; God is too much sinned
against."
To a Friend. " Do not give in to the fear of
Germany's becoming more barbarous than ever,
by the discredit into which letters will be brought
by our theology." (March 29th, 1523.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMA. — MUSIC. — ASTROLOGY.
BANKING.
-PRINTING.-
Of Tlieatrical Representations. Luther does not
blame a schoolmaster for getting up Terence's
plays. He recapitulates the various advantages
derivable from the drama. If you keep away i
from plays because they treat of love, you must on
the same principle fear reading the Bible. " Our
dear Joachim has asked me for my opinion on
those plays from sacred story, which many of our
ministers blame. Briefly, then, here it is. The
command is, that all men are to spread and propa-
gate God's word, by all means; not by preaching
only, but by writings, paintings, sculptui*e, psalms,
songs, music ; for, as the Psalm says, ' Praise him
with the timbrel and dance : praise him with stringed
instruments and organs.^ And Moses says, . . .'and
ye shall bind them for a sigti upon your hand, that
tJiey may be as frontlets between your eyes. , . . and
thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thine
house, and upon thy gates.' Moses wishes the word
to^ be a frontlet between the eyes, and how can that
be done better and more clearly than by repre-
sentations of the kind, grave and modest ones, and
not by farces, as formerly, under the papacj' ?
Spectacles of this nature take the eyes of the
people, and work upon them frequently much
more than public preachings. I know that in
Lower Germany, where the public profession of
the Gospel is prohibited, dramas, drawn from the
Law and the Gospel, have converted numbers,"
(April 5th, 1543.)
F
06
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
A.D. 1530— 154C.
Of Music. " Music is one of the finest and most
magnificent of God's gifts. Satan hates it. It
dispels temptations and evil thoughts ; the devil
cannot hold out against it. . . Some of the nobility
and of the courtiers think that my gracious lord
might spare three thousand florins a year for
music ; thirty thousand are expended on useless
matters." " Duke George, the landgrave of Hesse,
and John Frederick, elector of Saxony, used to
keep singers and musicians : now it is the duke of
Bavaria, the emperor Ferdinand, and the emperor
Charles who do so." Luther being entertained
(Dec. 17th, 1538) in the house of a musical family,
who played to him to his great delight, he bursts
out with, " If our Lord grants us such noble gifts
in this life, which is but filth and misery, what
will it be in the life everlasting ? This is a fore-
taste." " Singing is the best exercise ; it has no
concern with the word. . . . Therefore do I re-
joice that God has refused to the peasants {alhding,
no doubt, to the peasants in revolt) so great a gift
and comfort. They do not understand music, and
listen not to the word." He one day said to a
harp-player, "My friend, play me such an air as
David used to play. Were he to return to earth,
I think he would be surprised to find such skilful
players." " How happens it that we have now-a-
days so many fine things of a worldly kind, and
nothing but what is cold and indifferent of a
spiritual (and he repeated some German songs) ?
I cannot agree with those who despise music,
as do all dreamers and mystics." "... I will ask
the prince to devote this money to the establish-
ment of a musical academy." (April, 1541.)
On the 4th of October, 1530, he writes to Ludovic
Senfel, a musician of the court of Bavaria, to ask
him to set the In pace in id tpsum to music: " The
love of music overpowers my fear of being refused,
when you shall see a name which, no doubt, you
hate. This same love also gives me the hope that
my letters will involve you in no disagreeables.
Who could reproach you on their account, even
wei-e he a Turk ? . . . After theology, no art can
be compared with music." Luther, introducing a
painter named Sebastian to his friend Amsdorf,
says: " I know not whether you want his services.
I sliould like, however, to see your dwelling more
tasteful and ornamented, on account of the flesh,
which is the better for some recreation, provided it
be sinless and unobjectionable." (Feb. 6th, 1542.)
Of Painting. — Luther's pamphlets against the
pope were seldom published without symbolic en-
gravings. " As for the.se three furies," he says, in
explanation of one of these satirical engravings,
" I had nothing else in my mind, when I applied
them to the pope, than to express the atrocity of
the papal abomination by these, the most forcible
and most revolting figures known to the Latin
tongue ; for the Latins know not what Satan or
the devil is, any more than the Greeks and other
nations." (May 8th, 1545.) Lucas Cranach was
the designer of these figures. Luther says : "Mas-
ter Lueas has little delicacy of feeling ; he might
have spared the other sex, in consideration of our
mothers and of God's work; and he might have
painted other forms, worthier of the pope, I
meati more diabolical." (June 3rd, 1545.) " I will
do my utmost, if I live, to make Lucas substitute a
more decent painting for this obscene one." (June
I5th.) Luther pnjfessed great admiration for
Albert Diirer; and, on hearing of his death, wrote:
" It is painful, no doubt, to have lost him. Let
us rejoice, however, that Christ has released him
by so happy an end from this world of misery and
of trouble, which soon, perhaps, will be desolated
by greater troubles still. God has been unwilling
to suff"er him, who was born for happiness, to see
such calamities. May he rest in peace with his
fathers!" (April, 1528.)
Of Astronomy and Astrology. — " It is true that
astrologers may predict the future to the ungodly,
and announce the death which awaits them, for the
devil knows the thoughts of the ungodly, and has
them in his power." Mention being made of a
new asti'onomer, who was for proving that it is the
earth that revolves, and not the firmament, the sun,
and the moon; it being the same, he said, with us
as with men in a carriage or a ship, who think they
see the shore and the trees moving past them*,
Luther observed: "So it is with the world now-a-
days; men, to be thought clever, won't content
themselves with what others do and know. The
fool wishes to change the whole art of astronomy ;
but, as holy Scripture saith, Joshua commanded the
sun, not the earth, to stand still." " Astrologers
are in the wrong in attributing to stars the evil in-
fluences which proceed from comets." " Master
Philip (Melanchthon) has often tried, but could
never make me a believer in the art. He maintains
it to be a real art; but that no professor of it is an
adept." A nativity being shown him, Luther
said: " It is a beautiful and pleasing fancy, and
flattering to the understanding. You proceed re-
gularly from one line to the other. ... It is with
astrology as with the art of the sophists, de decern
proedicamentis realiter distinctis ; all is false and ar-
tificial: but, in this vain and factitious science, there
is an admirable unity, and, notwithstanding the
lapse of ages, and the diversity of sects that have
arisen — Thomists, Albertists, Scotists — its follow-
ers have remained faithful to the same rules."
" Sciences which have matter for their object are
uncertain ; for matter is without form, and is withou t
qualities and properties. Now, astrology has matter
for its object, &c." " The astrologers had predicted
that there would be a deluge in 1524, and it did
not take place until the following year, the epoch of
the revolt of the peasants. Burgomaster Hendorf,
however, had a quart of beer taken up to the top of
his house, to wait for the deluge there." Master
Philip said that tiie emperor Charles would live to
be eighty-four. Dr. Luther replied: " The world
will not last so long. Ezekiel is against it. If we
drive out the Turk the prophecy of Daniel is ful-
filled; and, of a certainty, the day of judgment is
then at hand." A large red star, which had aji-
peared in the sky, and which subsequently took the
shape of a cross in 1516, appeared again, " but thi.s
time," says Luthei", " the cross seemed to be broken,
for the Gospel was obscured by sects and revolts.
I see nothing certain in such signs; they are com-
monly diabolical and deceitful. We have seen
many in these fifteen latter years."
Of Printing. " Printing is the best and highest
gift, the summum et postremum donum, by which
God advanceth the Gospel. It is the last flamy
which shines before the extinction of the world.
Thanks to God that it hath come at last. Holy
fathers, now at rest, luxve desired to see this day of the
* Alluding, no doubt, to Copernicus.
A.D. 1530-154«.
OF PREACHING.
67
revealed Gospel." Being shown a writing of the
Fuggers, in letters of fantastical shape, so that no
one could read it, he said, " This is invented by
able men, and men of forethought; but such an
invention is the sign of a most corrupt age. We
read that Julius Cassar employed similar letters.
It is said that the emperor, instructing his secreta-
ries, makes them write, on matters of importance,
in two conti'adictoi-y mannex'S, and that they know
not to which of the two he shall affix his seal."
Of Banking. "A cardinal, bishop of Brixen,
reputed very wealthy, having died at Rome, no
money was found upon him, but only a small note
in his sleeve. Pope Julius II., suspecting it to be
a letter of change, sent instantly for the agent of the
Fuggers at Rome, and inquired whether he knew
the hand 1 ' Yes,' he replied, ' it is the acknow-
ledgment of Fugger and Co. for three hundred thou-
sand florins.' The pope asked him whether he
could pay all this money ? ' Directly,' was the
reply. The pope then sent for the French and
English cardinals, and asked them whether their
kings could raise three tons of gold in an hour ?
They answered, ' No.' ' Well,' he said, ' a burgess
of Augsburg can.' " " Fugger having one day to
give in a return of his property to the council of
Augsburg, told them that he could not say what he
was worth, for that his money was out all over the
world, in Turkey, Greece, Alexandria, France,
Portugal, England, Poland, &c.; but that he could
tell them what he had in Augsburg if they liked."
CHAPTER V,
OP PREACHING. — LDTHER's STYLE. — HE ACKIIOWi:,EDGES
THE VIOLENCE OF HIS CHARACTEa.
"Oh! how I trembled when I had to ascend the
pulpit for the first time ! But I was forced to
preach, and to the brothers first of all. . . . Under
this very pear-tree where we are now standing, I
adduced fifteen arguments to Dr. Staupitz against
my vocation for the pulpit : at last I said, ' Dr.
Staupitz, you wish to kill me ; I shall not live three
months,' He answered me, 'Well, our Lord has
great business on hand above, and wants able
men.'" " I set about collecting my works into
volumes, with but little zeal and ardour ; I feel
Saturn's hunger, and wish to devour all, for there
are none of my books which please me, if I except
the Treatise on the Bondage of the Will, and the Cate-
chism." (July 9th, 1537.) " I do not like Philip to be
pi'es3nt at my lectures or sermons; but I place the
cross before me and say, ' Philip, Jonas, Pomer,
and the rest, have nothing to do with the matter;'
and then I endeavour to fancy that no one has sat
in the pulpit abler th.an myself." Dr. Jonas said
to him, " Sir doctor, I cannot at all follow you in
your preaching." Luther replied, " I cannot my-
self ; for my subject is often suggested either by
something personal, or some pi'ivate matter, ac-
cording to times, circumstances, and hearers.
Were I young, I should like to retrench many
things in my sermons, for I have been too wordy."
" I wish the people to be taught the Catechism
well. I found myself upon it in all my sermons,
and I preach as simply as possible. I want the
common people, and children, and servants, to un-
derstand me. I do not enter the pulpit for the sake
of the learned ; they have my books."
Dr. Erasmus Alberus, being about to leave for
the March, asked Luther how he should preach
before the prince. " Your sermons," said he,
" ought to be addressed, not to princes, but to the
rude and simple people. If, in mine, I was thinking
of Melanchthon and the other doctors, I should do
no good ; but I preach solely for the ignorant, and
that pleases all. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin I
spare until we learned ones come together ; and,
then, ' we make it so curled and finical that God
himself wondereth at us.' " " Albert Diirer, the
famous painter of Nuremberg, used to say that he
took no pleasure in paintings charged with colours,
but in those of a less ambitious kind. I say the same
of sermons." " Oh ! how happy should I have been
when I was in the monastery of Erfurth, if I could
once, but once, have heard but one poor Httle word
pi-eached on the Gospel, or on the least of the
Psalms." " Nothing is moi-e acceptable or more
useful to the general run of hearers, than to preach
the law and examples. Sermons on grace and on
justification are cold to their ears." Amongst the
qualities which Luther desiderates in a preacher,
is a fine person, and that he be such as to make
himself loved by good women and maidens. In his
Treatise on Monastic Vows, Luther asks pardon of the
reader for saying many things, which are usually
passed over in silence. " Why not dare to say
what the Holy Ghost, for the instruction of men,
has dictated to Moses ? But we wish our ears to be
purer than the mouth of the Holy Ghost."
To J. Brentius. " I seek not to flatter or to de-
ceive thee, and I do not deceive myself w hen I say,
that I prefer thy writings to my own. It is not
Brentius whom I praise, but the Holy Ghost, who
is gentler and easier in thee. Thy words flow pure
and limpid. My style, rude and unskilful, vomits
forth a deluge, a chaos of words, boisterous and
impetuous as a wrestler contending with a thousand
successive monsters ; and, if I may presume to
compare small things with great, methinks there
has been vouchsafed me a portion of the four-fold
spirit of Elijah, rapid as the wind and devouring
as fire, which I'oots up mountains and dashes rocks
to pieces ; and to thee, on the contrary, the mild
murmur of the light and refreshing breeze. I feel,
however, comfort from the consideration that our
common Father hath need, in this his immense
family, of each servant ; of the hard against the
hard, the rough against the rough, to be used as a
sharp wedge agaiust hard knots. To clear the air
and fertilize the soil, the rain which falls and sinks
as the dew is not enough,— the thunder-storm is
still required." (August 20th, 1530.) " I am far
from believing myself without fault ; but I can, at'
the least, glorify myself with St. Paul, that 1 cannot
be accused of hypocrisy, and that I have always
spoken the truth, perhaps, it is true, a little too
harshly. But I would I'ather sin hi disseminating
the truth with hard words, than shamefully retain
it captive. If great lords are hurt by them, they
can go about their own business, without thinking
of mine or of my doctrines. Have I done them any
wrong or injustice ? If I sin, it will be for God to
pardon me.'' (Feb. 5th, 1522.)
To Spalatin. " I cannot deny that I was more
violent than I need have been ; but they knew it,
and should not have provoked the dog. You can
judge by yourself how difficult it is to moderati-
one's fire, and x'estraiu oue's pen. And hence I
F 2
G8
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
have always hated appeai'ing in public ; but the
more I hate, the more I am forced to it in my
own despite." (Feb. 1520.) He often said, " I
keep three savage dogs. Ingratitude, Pride, and
Envy ; he whom they bite is well-bitten." " When
I die, the papists will discover the kind of adver-
sary they have had in me. Other preachers will
not observe the same measure, the same modera-
tion. They have found this out with Miinzer,
Carlstadt, Zwingle, and the Anabaptists." " When
roused to anger, I become firmer, and keener
witted. All my temptations and enemies are
put to ilight. 1 never write or speak better than
when in anger."
To Michael Marx. " Thou canst not think how
I love to see my adversaries daily rising up more
against me. I am never haughtier or bolder than
when I hear I have offended them. Doctors, bishops,
princes, what are they to me ? It is written : ' Why
do the heatlien rage, andthe people hnagine a vain thing ?
The kings of the earth set themseltes, and the nders
take counsel together against the Lord, and against
his anointed !' I have such a contempt for these
Satans, that if I were not retained here, I would
straight to Rome in my hate of the devil and all
these furies. But I must have patience with the
pope, with ray disciples, with my servants, with
Catherine von Bora, with every one ; and my hfe
is nothing else than patience."
BOOK THE FIFTH.
CHAPTER I,
DEATHS OF LUTHEr's FATHER, OF HIS DAUGHTER, &C^
" There is no union or society so sweet and happy
as a well-assorted marriage. It is delightful to
see a husband and wife living in unity and peace.
But then nothing can be more bitter or more pain-
ful than the dissolution of the tie. Next in bitter-
ness is the death of children ; and this last sor-
I'ow, alas ! I have experienced." " I am writing
in a melancholy mood, for I have just heard of my
father's death ; that old Luther, so good and so
beloved. And though, through me, he has had so
peaceable and pious a death in Christ, and though
delivered from the terrors of this world, he rests in
everlasting peace, nevertheless, my bowels yearn,
and I am moved to the soul — for was it not to him
that, by God's will, I owed my being." In a letter
the same day, to Melanchthon : " I succeed to his
name, and now I am to my family the old Luther.
It is now my turn and my right to follow him
through death to that kingdom promised us by
Christ, as we, with him, are miserable and despised
among men How I rejoice that he lived in
these times, and that he was enabled to see the
light of the truth. To God be blessing and praise,
and thanks for all his acts, and all his designs !"
(5th June, 1530.)
" When the news came from Freyberg, that
Master Hausmann was dead, we kept it from
doctor Luther, and told him first that he was ill,
then that he was confined to his bed, and then that
lie was sweetly asleep in Jesus. The doctor began
to weep loudly, and said, ' These are perilous times ;
God is purging his floor and his garner ; I pray
him that my wife and children may not live long
after me.' He remained sitting all the day, weeping
and bemoaning himself. There were with him,
doctor Jonas, Master Philip (Melanchthon), Master
Joachim Camerarius, and Gaspard von Keekeritz,
and he sat amongst them, weeping piteously." (a.d.
1538.)
When he lost his daughter Madeleine, aged
fourteen, his wife cried and lamented, but he said
to her, " My dear Catherine, think where she is
gone; to a certainty she has made a happy ex-
change. The flesh bleeds, indeed; that is our
nature; but the spirit exults and finds all as it
should be. Young people think not of disput-
ing; as we tell them, so they believe; with them
all is natural. They pass away without regret or
anguish, without the trials and temptations even of
death itself, almost without bodily pain; just as if
they fell asleep.". . . As his daughter lay vei'y ill,
he exclaimed, " I love her much ! but, O my God !
if it be thy will to take her hence, I would give her
up to thee without one selfish murmur." And
when she was on her death-bed, he said to her, " My
dearest child, my own Madeleine, I know you would
gladly stay with your father here, and you will
equally be ready to go to your Father which is in
heaven ! will you not ? " And she replied, " Oh
yes, my dear father, as God wills." " Dear little
girl," he continued, " the spirit is willing, but the
flesh is weak." He walked to and fro perturbedly,
and said, "Ah yes! I have loved this dear child
too much. If the flesh is so strong, what becomes
of the spirit ? "
He said, amongst other things, " God has not
given such good gifts these thousand yeai's to any
bishop as he has to me. We may glorify ourselves
in the gifts of God. Alas! I hate myself that I
cannot rejoice now as I ought to do, nor render
sufficient thanks to God. I try to lift up my heai-t
fi'om time to time to our Lord in some little
hymn, and to feel as I ought to do." " Well !
whether we live or die, domini sumus, in the geni-
tive or the nominative*. Come, sir doctor, be
firm!"
" The night before Madeleine's death, her mother
had a dream. She dreamed that she saw two
fair youths beautifully attired, who came as if they
wished to take Madeleine away with them, and
conduct her to be married. When Philip Melanch-
thon came the next morning and asked the lady
* A play upon the word Dominus. " Domini sumus" may
signify (Domini being construed in the genitive), " We are
the Lord's," or else (construed nominatively), " We are
lords" (i. e. masters, teachers). — Translator.
OF DEATH, EQUITY, AND LAW.
69
how it was with her daughter? she related her
dream, at which he seemed frightened, and re-
marked to others, ' that the young men were two
holy angels, sent to carry the maiden to the true
nuptials of a heavenly kingdom.' She died that
same day. When she was in the agony of death,
her father threw himself on his knees by her
bedside, and weeping bitterly, prayed to God that
he would spare her. She breathed her last in
her father's arms. Her mother was in the room,
but not by the bed, on account of the violence
of her grief. The doctor continued to repeat,
' God's will be done ! My child has another
Father in heaven V Then master Philip observed,
that the love of parents for theu* children was an
image of the Divine love impressed on the hearts
of men. God loves mankind no less than parents
do their children. When they placed her on the
bier, the father exclaimed, ' My poor, dear little
Madeleine, you are at i-est now.' Then, looking
long and fixedly at her, he said, 'Yes! dear child,
thou shalt rise again, shalt shine like a star! Yes!
like the sun! .... I am joyful in spirit; but oh!
how sad in the flesh! It is a strange feeling this,
to know she is so certainly at rest, that she is
happy, and yet to be so sad.' "
" And when the people came who were to help to
can-y the body, and said to him, as usual, how much
they sympathized in his grief, he said to them,
* Ah ! grieve no more for her, she is now a saint in
heaven. Oh ! that we may each experience such a
death : such a death I would willingly die this
moment.' While they were singing — ' Lord, re-
member not our sins of old,' he added, ' not only
our old sins, but those of to-day, this day ; for we
are greedy, covetous, &c. The scandal of the mass
still exists.' Ou returning from the burial, he said,
amongst other things, — ' The fate of our children,
and above all of girls, is ever a cause of uneasi-
ness. I do not fear so much for boys ; they can
find a living anywhere, provided they know how to
work. But it is different with girls ; they, poor
things, must search for employment staff in hand.
A boy can enter the schools, and become a shining
character {ein feiner vian), but a girl cannot do
much to advance herself, and she is easily led away
by bad example, and is lost. . . . Therefore, I give
up without regret this dear one to our Lord.'"
To Jonas. " Report has, no doubt, informed you
of the transplanting of my daughter Madeleine to
the kingdom of Christ ; and although my wife and
I ought only to think of offering up joyful thanks
to the Almighty for her happy deliverance and end,
by which she has escaped from all the snares of
the world, the flesh, the Turks, and the devil ;
nevertheless the force of instinct {ttjs ffropyrig) is
so great, that I cannot forbear from tears, sighs,
and groans, — say rather, my very heart dies within
me. I feel engraven on my inmost soul her
features, her words, and actions ; all that she was
to me in life and health, and on her sick bed, my
dear, my dutiful child. The death of Christ him-
self (and oh ! what are all deaths in comparison 1)
cannot tear her from my thoughts, as it should.
. . . She was, as you know, so sweet, so amiable,
so full of tenderness." (September 23rd, 1542.)
CHAPTER II.
OF EaCITY; OF LAW. — OPPOSITION OF THE THEOLOGIANS
TO THE JURISTS.
" It is better to direct one's conduct by natural
reason than by the written law, for reason is the soul
and queen of law. But where are they who are
endowed with such an understanding ? You can
scarcely meet with one in a century. Our gracious
lord, the elector Frederick, was such a man.
There was his councillor, too, Fabian von Feilitsch,
a layman, who had not studied and who yet argued
better on the points and the marrow of the law
(super apices et medullam juris), than the jurists
from their books. Master Philip Melanchthon so
teaches the liberal arts, as to lend them more light
than he derives from them. I myself, too, take my
art into books, and do not draw it from them. He
who should seek to imitate the four men of whom I
have just spoken, would do well to abandon the idea,
and content himself with learning and listening.
Such prodigies are rare. The written law is for
the people and the common herd of men. Natural
reason and all-piercing thought for such men as
those I have mentioned." "An eternal combat
goes on between the jurists and the theologians ;
there is the same opposition betwixt the law and
grace." " The law is a lovely bride, as long as she
i-emains in her nuptial bed. If she goes to another
bed, and wishes to domineer over theology, she
is a great — . Law should doff her cap to theology."
To Melanchthon. " I am of the same opinion
that I always was with regard to the right of the
sword. I think with you, that the Gospel has
taught and counselled nothing with regard to this
right, and that it could not possibly do so, because
the Gospel is the law of will and liberties, which
have nothing to do with the sword or the right of
the sword. But this right is not abolished by the
Gospel, but is even confirmed and recommended ;
which is not the case with respect to things that
are simply permitted." " Before me, there has
been no jurist who has known what the law is,
in relation to God ; what they know, they have
from me. We do not find in the Gospel that we
are to adore jurists. If our Lord God will be our
judge, what are jurists to him ? As to the con-
cerns of this world, I leave them masters. But in
the things which concern God, they must be under
me. My psalm, my own psalm is. Be wise now,
therefore, 0 ye kings ; if one of the two must perish,
perish the law, reign Christ !
" ' The kings of the earth set themselves together.^
David himself says, 'Against his Son there will
array themselves the power, the wisdom, the mul-
titude of the world, and he will be alone against
many, foolish against the wise, powerless against
the powerful ;' of a verity, a marvellous ordering
of things. Our Lord God has all and evei'y thing
except the wise ; but beyond this, there peals the
terrible, ' Be wise now therefore, O ye kings ; be
instructed, ye judges of the earth.'" "If the
jurists will not pray for pardon for their sins, and
receive the Gospel, I will so confound them that
they shall not be able to extricate themselves. I
understand nothing of law, but I am lord of the law
in things touching the conscience. We are indebted
to the jurists for having taught and for teaching to
the world such countless equivocations, tricks, and
calumnies, that their language has become more
70
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
confused than in Babel ; here, no one can com-
prehend the other ; there, no one will under-
stand the other. O sycophants, O sophists, pests
of mankind, I write to you, boiling over with
passion, and I doubt whether I could teach you
better were I cool and collected." (Feb. 6th, 1546.)
Alluding to a student's being admitted the
following day as Doctor of Law, Luther said,
" To-morrow a fresh viper will be created to sting
the theologians."
" The saying is right, A good jurist is a bad
Cliristian. In fact, the jurist esteems and vaunts
the justice of works, as if we were justified by them
before God. If he turn Christian, he is looked
upon by his brother jurists as a monster, and
has to beg his bread, being repudiated as se-
ditious." " Strike at the conscience of the jurists,
and they know not what to do. Munzer attacked
thera with the sword ; he was a madiuan." "Were
I to study law fjr two years, I should become
more learned than Dr. C, for I should speak
of things just as tliey are, as being just or unjust,
whilst he quibbles on words." " The doctrine
of the jurists, is nothing but a nisi, an except.
Theology does not proceed on this wise, but has a
firm foundation.''
" The authority of theologians consists in their
power of obscuring universals, and all connected
j with them. They can raise and lower. As soon as
the word makes itself heard, Moses and the emperor
must yield." " The law and laws of the Greeks and
Persians ai'e fallen into desuetude. The Roman
or imperial law only holds by a thread. For if an
empire or a kingdom fall, its laws and ordinances
must likewise fail." " I leave cobbler, tailor, and
jui'ist to their several callings. But let them not
attack my pulpit !" . , . " Many believe that the
theology wliicli has been declared of .our time, is
naught. If this be the case whilst I live, what
will it be after my death ? As a set off, many
amongst us are big with this thought of which
they will by and by be brought to bed, namely,
that the law is naught."
Sermon against the Jurists, preached on Twelfth
Day. " Look at our haughty jurists and knights
at law of Wittemberg. . . . They do not read our
books, call them catonic (for canonic), take no
heed of our Lord, and do not attend church.
Well I since they do not recognize Dr. Pomer to
be bishop of Wittemberg, or me to be preacher
to this church, I no longer reckon tliem amongst
my flock. But, say they, you go against the
imperial law. I — this law which wrongs the poor."
There follows a dialogue between a jurist and a
litigant, in which the former promises for ten
thalers to protract a law-suit for ten years
" Good and pious folk like Ileinicke Fuchs, in the
poem of the Fox." ..." Good people, these are
the reasons that make me pui'sue the jurists so
relentlessly. . , . They vaunt the canon law, the
— of the i)ope, and represent it to be a magnifi-
cent tiling, after our having with such trouble
expelled it from our churches. ... I warn you,
jurist, to let the old dog to sleep. Once awakened,
you will not easily get him back to his kennel !
The jurists are full of complaints and bitterness
against me. Wiiat can I do ? Had I not to render
an account of their souls, I would not chastise
them." He subsequently stat s, that he excepts
pious jurists.
CHAPTER IIL
FAITH : THE LAW.
To GerbeUius. " In this tumult of scandals, fall
not off from yourself. To sustain you, I render
back the spouse (faith) that you formerly gave
me ; I return her to you a spotless virgin. But
what is most strange and admirable in her is,
that she desires and attracts an infinity of rivals,
and that she is all the more chaste for being the
spouse of many. . . . Our rival, PhiHp Melanch-
thon, salutes you. Adieu, be happy with the affi-
anced bride of your youth." (January 23rd, 152.S.)
To Melanchthon. " Be a sinner, and be thy sins
never so great, let thy faith be still greater, and
rejoice thee in Christ, who is the conqueror of sin,
of death, and of the world. We must sin, as long as
we are here. This life is not the abode of righteous-
ness ; no, ' we look,' as says St. Peter, ' for a new
heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righ-
teousness.' .... Pray earnestly, for thou art a
gi'eat sinner." " I am just now deep in the doc-
trine of the remission of sins. I set at nought the
law and all the devils. Whosoever can believe
from his heart in the remission of sins, he shall be
saved." " Just as it is impossible to meet in na-
ture with the matheviaticaf, indivisible point, so
the righteousness demanded by the law is nowhere
to be found. No man can entirely satisfy the law ;
even lawyers themselves, spite of all their cunning,
are very frequently obliged to have recourse to the
remission of sins, for they cannot always hit the
mark, and when they have given a wrong judg-
ment, and the devil troubles their conscience.s,
neither Bartolus nor Baldus, nor all their other
doctors, are of any use to them. To bear up, they
are forced to protect themselves with the iwitiiceia
that is, with the remission of sins. They do their
best to judge ai'ight, and after that, all that remains
for them, is to say : ' If I have given a wi'ong
judgment, O my God, pardon me.' It is theo-
logy alone which possesses the mathematical point.
She does not grope in the dark. She has the word,
even God's word. She says, ' Jesus Christ is all righ-
teousness; whosoever lives in him, he is righteous.' "
" The law is, without doubt, necessary, but not
for salvation ; for no man can fulfil it: but the
pardon of sins consummates and fulfils it." " The
law is a true labyrinth which does but perplex the
conscience, and the righteousness of tlie law is a
minotaur, that is to say, a pure fiction, which, in-
stead of conducting us to heaven, leads us to hell."
Addition by Luther to a letter of Melanchthon vpoti
grace and the laic. . . . " To set myself entirely out
of sight of the law and works, I do not content
myself with seeing in Jesus Christ my master,
my lord, my benefactor, I would see in him my
doctrine, my gift, so that in him I possess all
things. He says, ' I am the way, the truth, and
the life ;' not ' I show you, or give you the way,
the truth, and the life ;' as if he only wrought this
within me, and was himself nevertheless apart from
me." ..." Theology is summed up in one only
point : true faith and trust in Jesus Christ. This
article embraces all the rest. Our faith is 'a
groan which cannot be uttered ;' and elsewhere,
' that we are in bondage under the law' (which
means, that we imprison ourselves in our own
works, instead of mounting on the wings of faith."
OF FAITH AND THE LAW.
71
" The devil deaircs actice righteousness only, a
righteousness which we work out for ourselves,
and in ourselves, whereas we have really only a
passive and extrinsic one, wliich he takes from
us. If we were limited to active righteousness,
we should be lost, for it is defective in ail men."
An English doctor, Antony Barns, asked Doctor
Luther, if Christians, justified by faith in Christ,
had any mei'it in the good works which followed,
for that this question was often debated in Eng-
land. Answer. " 1st. We are still sinners after
justification. 2nd. God promises rewards to those
who do well. Works do not merit heaven, but
they adorn the faith which justifies us. It is his
own gift to us, which God crowns."
" Fidelia animoe vox ad Christum. Ego sum txium
peccatum, tu Piea justitia ; triumpho igitur securus *,
&c. To bear up against des{iair, it is not sufficient
to have vain words upon the lips, or barren and
languishing faith; but we must stand erect, con-
firm our soul, and rely on Christ against sin, death,
hell, the law, and an evil conscience. When the
law accuses thee and reproaches thee with thy
faults, thy conscience says to thee, ' Yea, God has
given the law, and commanded it to be kept, under
pain of etei'nal damnation: thou must therefore be
damned.' To which thou shalt reply, ' I well know
that God has given the law; but he has also given
us the Gospel, by his Son, which says, " He that
believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." This
Gospel is above the whole law; for the law is
of the earth, and has been transmitted to us by
man; the Gospel is from Heaven, and has been
brought to us by the Son of God.' ' It matters
not,' says conscience, ' thou hast sinned and trans-
gressed the commandment of God; therefore, thou
shalt be damned.' Answer. ' I know very well that
I have sinned, but the Gospel frees me from my
sins, because I believe in Jesus; and this Gospel is
as high above the law as the heavens are high
above the earth. This ia the reason that the body
must remain upon earth, to bear the burden of the
law; but the soul ascends to the mountain with
Isaiic, and clings to the Gospel, which pnmiises
life eternal to all who believe in Christ Jesus.'
' It matters not,' again says conscience, 'thou shalt
go to hell; thou hast not kept the law.' Answer.
' Yes, if Heaven had not come to my succour; but it
has come to my succour, has been opened to me;
our Saviour has said, " He that believeth aud
is baptized, shall be saved." ' God said to Moses,
' Thou shalt see ray back, but thou shalt not see
my face.' The back was the law, the face is the
Gospel.
" The law does not endure grace, and, in its
turn, grace does not endui-e the law. The law is
only given for the haughty, the arrogant, nobles or
peasants, for hypocrites, and those who delight
in a multitude of laws. But gi'ace is promised
to poor suffering hearts, to the humble, to the
afflicted, and for the pardon of sins. Master
Nicholas Hausmann, Cordatus, Philip Melanch-
j thon, and I look for gi'ace." " There is no writer,
I save St. Paul, who has written fully and unanswer-
' ably on the law, because reason is inadequate to
judge of the law: it can only be judged by the
Spirit." (August 15th, 1530.)
* " The cry of a faithful soul to Christ. I am thy sin,
thou my righteousness; I rejoice, then, in safety," &c.
" Good and true diviiiiiy (Llie<jlogy) consists in
practice, use, and exercise. Its foundation is Christ,
whose passion, death, and resurrection are to be
comprehended through faith. Some, in the present
day, have devised a speculative theology, in accord-
ance with reason. This belongs to the devil in
hell. Thus, Zwingle and the sacramentarians
speculate that the body of Christ is in the bread,
but only in a spiritual sense. This is also the
theology of Origen. David did not think thus;
but he acknowledged his sins, and said, ' Have
mercy upon me, 0 Lord.' "
" I saw lately two signs in the heavens. I looked
from my window in the middle of the night, and I
saw the stars and all the majestic vault of God, sus-
taining itself without my being able to perceive the
pillars upon which the Creator had propped it.
Nevertheless, it crumbled not away. There are
those, however, who search fur these pillars, and
who would fain touch them with their hands ; but,
not being able to find them, they tremble, lament,
and fear the heavens will fall. They might touch
them, the heavens would never be moved. Again,
I saw great and heavy clouds, floating over my
head like an ocean. I perceived no prop which
could sustain them, and still they fell not, but
saluted us sadly, and passed on. And as they
passed, I distinguished the arch which had upheld
them — a splendid rainbow. Slight it was, without
doubt, and delicate ; one could not but tremble for
it, under such a mass of clouds. Nevertheless,
this aery line sufficed to support the load, and
to protect us. There are those, however, who are
alarmed at the weight of the clouds, and have no
confidence in their frail prop. They would prove
its strength, and not being able, they dread the
clouds will dissolve and drown us with their floods.
. . . Our rainbow is weak, their clouds are heavy ;
but the end will tell the strength of our bow."
(August, 1530.)
CHAPTER IV.
OF INNOVATORS : THE MYSTICS, &C.
" Curiosity is our bane ; it was the cause of Adam's
fall. I fear two things — epicurism and enthusiasm,
two sects which have still to reign. Takeaway the
decalogue aud heresy vanishes. The Holy Scrip-
tures are the manual of all heretics."
Luther called seditious and presumptuous-minded
men, " precocious saints, who, attacked by the
worm before arriving at maturity, were blown
by the slightest gust from the tree. Dreamers
(Schwermer) aie like butterflies. At first, a grub
which attaches itself to a wall, or builds itself a
little house, is hatched by the warmth of the sun,
and flies off a butterfly. The butterfly dies on a
tree, and leaves a long train of eggs." Dr. Mar-
tin Luther said of false brothers and heretics, who
fall away from us, that we ought to let them alone,
and not be vexed about them. If they will not
listen to us, we can send them, with all their fine
bravado, to hell.
" When I began to write against indulgences, I
lived for three years alone, without any holding
forth their hand to me. Now they are all for
claiming a share in the ti'iumi)li. I suffer enough
from my enemies, without the pain my good little
72
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
brothers give me. But who can bear up against
all ? Here am I attacked by young men, all Iresh
and unworked, whilst I am old and worn with
great sufferings and great labours. Osiander mivy
well hector, he has an easy time of it ; he has
only two sermons to deliver a week, and has four
hundred florins a-year." " In 1521, I had a
visit from one Marcus, one of the religionists of
Zwickau, an agreeable-mannered man enough, but
of empty opinions and life, in the view of conferring
with me on the doctrine they profess. As he
kept talking to me of things quite foreign from
Sci'ipture, I told him that I recognized the word
of God alone, and that if he sought to establish
anything else, he must at least prove his mission
by miracles. His reply was, ' Miracles ! Ah ! you
will see miracles, indeed, in seven years. God himself
cannot take my faith from me.' He also said, ' 1
can see at once whether any one is of the elect or
not.' After talking a long time about the talent
which must not be hid, and about purification ,
uvariiiess, expectation, I asked him who understood
his language ? He answered that he preached
only before believing and able disciples. ' How
do you know that they are able I' I asked. ' I
have only to look at them,' he replied, ' to see
their talent.' ' What talent, now, my friend, do
you see in me V ' You are still,' he answered, ' in
the first stage of mobility, but a time will come
when you will be in the first of immobility like
myself.' On this, I adduced to him several texts
of Scripture, and we parted. Shortly after, he
wrote me a verj' friendly letter, full of exhorta-
tions ; to which my sole answer was, ' Adieu, dear
Marcus.' "
" Some time afterwards a turner came to me,
who also called himself a prophet. He met me
just as I was going out of my house, and said
to me in a confident tone, ' Sir doctor, I bring you
a message from my Father.' ' Who is thy Father V
I said. 'Jesus Christ,' he replied. 'He is our
common Father ; what hath he ordered thee to
announce to me V ' That God's anger is kindled
against the world.' ' Who told thee this ?' ' Yes-
terday, just as I had passed through the gate of
Koswick, I saw a small cloud of fire in the air ;
which is a clear sign of God's wrath.' He then
mentioned another sign ; ' In the midst of a deep
sleep,' he said, ' I saw drunkards seated at table,
who said, Drink, di'ink, and God's hand was over
them. Suddenly one of them poured some beer
on my head, and I awoke.' ' Listen, my friend,' I
then said to him, ' do not make free in this manner
with God's name and orders,' and I gave him a
severe reprimand. When he found what I thought
of him, he went off" in a passion, muttering, ' Of
course, all who don't think with Luther are fools.' "
" Another time, again, I had to do with a man
from the Low Countries, who wished to argue
with me, to use his own terms, up to hell fire
inclusively. When I saw his ignorance, I said,
' Would it not be better to dispute over some cans
of beer V He was nettled at this, and took himself
off". The devil is a proud spirit, and can't bear
contempt."
Master Stiefel came to Wittember'g to confer
privily with Dr. Luther, and showed him his
opinion on the Day of Judgment, in twenty ai'ticles.
He believed that it would take place on St. Luke's
day. He was bade to remain quiet, and to keep
his opinions to himself, which annoyed him ex-
ceedingly. " Dear sir doctor," he said, " I am
surprised at your forbidding me to preach this,
and at your not believing me. Still, I must speak,
albeit unwillingly." Luther replied, " Dear mas-
ter, you have managed to hold your tongue for ten
years on this matter, during the reign of the
papacy ; keep quiet the little time that remains."
" But this very morning, as I was setting out
early, I saw a beautiful rainbow, and thought of
the coming of Christ." " There will be no rain-
bow when that day coraeth ; the thunder-bolt will
destroy every living creatui'e instantaneously. A
strong and powerful blast of the trumpet will
arouse us all. They who are in the grave are not
to be awakened by the piping of the shepherd's
reed." (a.d. 1533.) " Michael Stiefel believes him-
self to be the seventh angel announcing the last
day, and is giving away his books and his chattels,
as he will soon have no more use for them."
" Bileas is certainly damned, although he has had
astounding revelations, no less than those of Daniel,
for they embrace four empires too. 'Tis a fearful
warning for the proud. Oh ! let us humble our-
selves !"
Duke Henry of Saxony having come to Wittem-
berg, Dr. Martin Luther spoke twice to him against
Dr. Jeckel, exhoi-ting the prince to think of the evil
days upon which the church had fallen. Jeckel had
preached the following doctrine: — " Do what thou
wilt, believe only, thou shalt be saved." He ought
to have said: " When thou shalt be horn again, ?a\i\.
have become a new man, do then as thou art moved
to do." . . A pastor of Torgau having complained
to Luther of Dr. Jeckel's insolence and hypocrisy,
and of his having won over the nobility, the council,
and even the prince himself, by his wiles, the doctor
shuddered, sighed, spoke not, but he took himself
to prayer. That very day he ordered that Eisleben
(Agricola) should be required to make a public re-
traction, or that he should be publicly put down.
" Dr. Luther, reproaching Jeckel for daring, with
his limited experience and scanty skill in logic and
rhetoric, to oppose his former masters and teachers,
the latter replied : ' I ought to fear God more than
my teachers. I liave a God as well as you. . . .'
Dr. Jeckel afterwards sat down at table to supper,
but with a gloomy air. Dr. Luther eat heartily, as
did the guests who had come from Freyberg.
Then Luther broke out with, ' If I had made the
court as pious as you the world, I should have
laboured to some purpose,' &c. Jeckel still kept
his eyes cast gloomily down, showing by his looks
what was passing in his mind. At last Luther got
up to take his leave, when Jeckel tried to detain
him, and engage hira in discussion; but the doctor
would have nothing more to say to him." " Dr.
Jeckel is one of the Eisleben kind. He was court-
ing my niece Anna; but I said to him, 'Never, to
all eternity.' And to the little girl: ' If thou wilt
have him, take thyself from my sight for ever; for
never will I see or listen to thee more.' "
Of the Antinoniians, and, in paHicular, of Eisleben.
" Ah ! how painful it is to lose a good and dearly-
loved friend ! This man used to be my guest, my
companion, and would laugh and make merry with
me. . . . And now, he turns against me ! . . .
Such doctrine, however, must not be endured. Re-
ject the law, without which there can be nor
Church, nor government ! This is not tapping the
TEMPTATIONS.
73
cask, but breaking it in, . . . Now is the time to
resist. . . . Can I bear to bear bira puffing him-
self up whilst I Hve, and seeking to be the master ?
. . . . It is no excuse for him to say that he has
only spoken of Dr. Creuziger and of master Roerer.
The Catechism, the Explanation of the Decalogue,
and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, and not
Creuziger's or Roerer's. . . . He would base re-
pentance on the love of justice, and so preaches the
revelation of the divine wrath to the just and
pious only. He does not preacli for the wicked.
Yet St. Paul says the law is for the ungodly. In
short, by taking away the law, he takes away the
Gospel, and he withdraws our belief from the firm
support of conscience to subject it to the caprices
of the flesh. Wlio could have dreamt of this sect
of the Antinomians ! . . . I iiave got over three
cruel storms — Miinzer, the Sacramentarians, and
the Anabaptists. There is to be no end of writing,
then. I do not wish to live long, for there is no
peace to be hoped for." (a.d. 1538.)
Dr. Luther ordered master Ambrose Bemd to
instruct the professors at the university to abstain
from faction, and from paving the way for schism,
and at the same time prohibited then- electing
master Eisleben dean. ..." Tell that to your pro-
fessors of faculties, and if they disregard it, I will
denounce them from the pulpit." (a.d. 1539.) On
the last day of November (a.d. 1538), as Luther
was enjoying himself with his cousins, his brother,
and sister, and some friends from Mansfeld, men-
tion was made of master Grickel, and they inter-
ceded for him. The doctor replied, " I held that
man to be my most faithful friend, but he has
grossly deceived me. Let him bewai-e ; I shall soon
write against him : there is no repentance in him."
"Such was my confidence in that man (Eisleben),
that, when I went to Smalkalde in 1537, I en-
ti'usted my pulpit to him, my church, my wife,
my children, ray house, and all that was dearest to
me." Dr. Luther was reading ovei', in the evening
of the last day of January, 1539, the propositions
which Eisleben was going to maintain against him,
and in which there were some absurdities about
Saul and Jonathan, and there occured the expres-
sion, " I have eat a little honey, and therefore I
die." "Jonathan," said Luther, "is master Eis-
leben, who eats honey and j)reaches the Gospel ;
Saul is Luther. . . . Ah ! Eisleben, art thou such
a ... Oh ! God forgive thee thy rancour." " If
the law be thus transferred from the church to the
council, to the civil power, the latter will say in its
turn, ' We, too, are faithful Christians ; the law
concerns not us ;' and the executioners, at last,
will say the same. All will be grace and sweetness,
and then unbridled passions and crimes will follow.
Miinzer began on this wise."
In 1540, towards the close of an entertainment
which Luther gave to some of the principal mem-
bers of the university, and when all were in good
humour, a goblet was produced, stained in rings of
various colours. Luther filled it with wine, and
emptied it to the health of his guests ; and, in their
turn, they all severally drained it to his health,
until it came round to master Eisleben, when Luther
said, as he held the glass out to him, " My friend,
all in this glass, above the first ring, is the ten com-
mandments ; the credo (belief) comes next ; then
the pater noster ; the catechism is at the bottom ;"
and then he quaffed it off", filled it again, and pre-
sented it to master Eisleben, who would not go
beyond the first ring, but put the glass buck on the
table, and could not look at it without a kind of
horror. Luther noticed this, and remarked to his
guests, " I knew that master Eisleben would only
drink off the commandments, and would leave the
credo, the pater noster, and the catechism." Master
Jobst, dining one day with Luther, showed him
some propositions, according to whicli the law ought
not to be preached, since we are not justified by it.
Luther got angry, and exclaimed, " What, will my
brethren propose such innovations even while 1
Hve? Ah! how ought not master Philip to be
honoured, who teaches with clearness and truth the
use and utility of the law. Count Albert von
Mansfeld's prophecy is being realised. He wrote
to me: ' There is a Munzer lurking behind that doc-
trine;^ and, indeed, he who pulls down the law,
pulls down at the same time the whole framework
of human polity and society (polltiam et tecono-
miam). If the law be thrust out of the church, there
will no longer be anything recognized as a sin in
the world, since the Gospel defines and punishes
sin only by recurring to the law." (a.d. 1541.)
" If, at the outset, I inveighed against the law,
both from the pulpit and in my writings, the reason
was, that the Christian Church was at the time
overladen with superstitions, luider which Christ
was altogether buried and hidden, and that I
yearned to save and liberate pious God-fearing
souls from this tyranny over the conscience. But
I have never rejected the law."
CHAPTER V.
temptations. — REGRETS AND DOUBTS OF HIS FRIENDS
AND HIS WIFE. — LUTHER's OWN DOUBTS.
Master Philip Melanchthon one day told the follow-
ing fable at Dr. Martin Luther's table: — " Aman had
caught a little bird, and the bird desiring its liberty,
said to him, ' O my good friend, let me go, and I will
show you a beautiful pearl, worth thousands of
florins.' ' Thou art fooling me,' said the man.' ' Oh
no, place confidence in me, come with me, and I
will show it thee.' The man lets the bird go, and
it perches itself on a tree, and begins to sing,
' Trust little, keep what thou hast, trouble not thy-
self about what is irrecoverably lost.' {Crede parntm,
tua serta, et quce periere, relinque.) Now, was not
that a beautiful pearl ?" " Philip once asked me
to glean a motto for him out of the Bible, which he
would never be tired of. There is nothing you
can give to man, which he will not grow tired of."
" Had not Philip been so afflicted by temptations,
he would have had strange ideas and opinions."
Luther's idea of Paradise is gross and material.
He believes that in the new heaven, and in the new
earth, there will be the useful animals as well as
men. " I often ponder upon the life everlasting
and its delights, but I cannot comprehend how we
shall pass our time, for there will be no changes,
no work, no drinking, no eating, nor business ; but
I conclude we shall have objects enough to con-
template. On this, Philip Melanchthon said, vei'y
well, * Master, show us the Father ; that is
enough.' " " The peasants do not deserve the
fruits which the earth so lavishly brings forth. I
return more thanks to our Lord for a tree, than all
74
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
the peasants for all the produce of their fields.
' Ah ! Dondne Doctor,' said Melanchthon, ' except
a few, as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac' "
" Dr. Jonas said at supper, ' Ah ! how magni-
ficently St. Paul speaks of his death. I caunot^'
however, believe him !' ' It strikes me too,' said.
Dr. Lutliei-, ' that St. Paul could not think on this
subject as firmly as he spoke. I myself, un-
happily, cannot make my faith equal to what I
preach, speak, and write of the matter, or to'
what others suppose of me. And, perhaps, it
were not good that we should be able to perfoi'ra
to the height of God's commands, or there would
be an end of his divinity ; he would be found a
liar and his words would no more be believed.' "
" A wicked and horrible book against the holy
Trinity was published in 1532, speaking of which,
Dr. Luther said, ' Men of this chimerical turn of
mind, do not think that others may have had
temptations on this matter as we'd. But how op-
pose my own poor thoughts to the word of God and
to the Holy Ghost? {oppunere meam cogltationem terbo
Deiet Spiritiii Sancto?) Such an opposition will
not bear examination."
The doctor's wife said to him, " Sir doctor, how
happens it that under the papacy, we prayed so
often and so fervently, whilst now we pray so coldly
and so seldom ?" The doctor replied, " The devil
is ever at his servants to make them diligent iu
their worship of him." Once, exhorting his wife
to read and to learn carefully God's word, and
particularly the Psalter, she answered, that she
heard and read quite enough of it evei-y day, and
could even i-epeat many things out of it. The
doctor sighed, and said, " Even so begins a dislike
of God's word; 'tis the sign of an evil future. New
books will appear, and Holy Scripture will be
despised, cast into a corner, and be, as the phrase
runs, thrown under the table." Luther askmg his
wife if she believed herself to be holy, she was all
surprised, and said, " How can I be holy ? I am a
great sinner !" On which, he remarked, " You see,
then, the horrid consequences of the papal doc-
trine; how it has injured men's hearts, and pre-
occupied the whole inward man, so that they can
no longer see anything except the piety, and the
personal and outward sanctity of the works one
does, even for one's own sake."
" The PiUer Nostcr and faith give me confidence
against the devil. My little Madeleine, and my
little John too, pray for me, as well as many other
Christians. ... I love my Catherine, I love her
more than myself, for I would die sooner than see
any harm happen to her or her children, I love
my lord Jesus Christ, too, who, through pure pity,
has shed his blood for me. But my faith ought to
be much greater and livelier than it is. O, my
God ! judge not thy servant 1" " What contri-
butes not a little to afflict and tempt me, is that
God seems to be capricious and changeable. He
gave Adam promises and ceremonies ; and that
came to an end with the rainbow and Noah's ai'k.
To Abraham he gave circumcision, to Moses mira-
culous signs, to his people, the law ; but to Christ,
and through Christ, tlie Gospel, which we look
upon as annulling all this. And here come the
Turks to efface the Divine promise, and to say,
' Your law shall last yet a little, but shall be
changed at last.' " (Luther subjoins no reflection). I
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEVIL. — TEMPTATIONS.
'' Once, in our monastery at Wittemberg, I dis-
tinctly heard the devil making a noise. As I was
begimiing to read the Psalter, after singing matins,
and had sat down, and was about to study and
write for my lecture, the devil came, and thrice
made a noise behind my stove, as if he would have
dragged it away. At last, as he would not give
over, I put my little books by, and went to bed. . . .
I heard him another night, in the room above my
he,;d, but, perceiving it was the devil, I paid no at-
tention and went to sleep again." " A young
girl, who was the mistress of the old miser at Wit-
temberg, falling ill, saw a vision — a fine and magni-
ficent figure, that she took to be the Christ, and to
which she accordingly addi'essed her prayers. They
sent iu all haste to the monastery for Dr. Luther.
When he saw the figure, and that it was only a
trick of the devil's, he exhorted the girl not to
allow herself to be so cozened; and, indeed, as
soon as she had spat in the phantom's face, the
devil disappeared, and the figure changed into a
great serpent, which suddenly bit the girl's ear, so
that the blood flowed, and then disappeared. Dr.
Luther saw this with his own eyes, together with
many other persons." (The editor of Luther's con-
versations does not say that he had this anecdote
from Luther himself.) A minister of Torgau com-
plained to Luther that the devil made an extraor-
dinary tumult and clatter iu his house of a night,
breaking his pots and pans, and then throwing them
at his head, and laughing. This racket had gone on
for a year, so that his wife and children insisted on
leaving the house. Luther said to him : " Dear
brother, be strong in the Lord ; be not overcome by
this murderous devil. If you have not invited this
guest by your sins, you can say to him, ' I am here
by divine authority, father of a family, and, by a
heavenly call, pastor of the church; but thou, thou
devil, glidest into this house as a thief and nmrde-
rer. Why dost thou not stay iu heaven ? Who
has asked thee hei-e ? ' "
Oti a young girl possessed by an eril spirit. " Since
this devil is a merry spirit, and makes a mock of
us, we must first pray seriously for this young girl,
who is a sufferer on account of our sins, and then
flout the spirit, and treat it contemptuously, but not
try it b}' exorcisms and other grave forms, because
the devil's pride laughs at all that. Let us perse-
vere in prayer for the maideu, and in scorn for the
devil, until, with the grace of Christ, it withdraws.
It would be well for the princes, too, to reform their
vices, through which this evil spirit plainly tri-
umphs. I pray thee, since the thing is worthy to
be made public, to make diligent inquiry into all
the circumstances ; and, to guard against imposi-
tion, ascertain whether the coins which this girl
swallows be really gold, and sterling money. For
I have been made the prey of so many cheats,
tricks, plots, lies, and artifices, as to incline me to
withhold my belief from anything I have not seen
_or heard." (August 5ih, 153G.) " Let the pastor
not be troubled in conscience at having buried the
woman who killed herself, if, mdeed, she did kill
herself. I know many similar instances, but have
commonly supposed the suff'erers to liave been
killed simply and immediately by the devil, as a
J
traveller is slain by a robber. For when it is
evident that the suicide could not have taken place
naturally ; when we hear of a string, or a girdle,
or (as in the case under consideration) of a loose
Veil, without any knot to be seen in it, and which
would not be strong enough to kill a fly, we ought,
in my opinion, to conclude it to be some fascination
of the devil's, binding the sufferers to suppose they
are doing something else, for instance, praying, —
and then he kills them. Nevertheless, the civil
power acts rightly in visiting such things severely,
or Satan would grow bolder. The world deserves
warnings of the kind, for it is growing epicurean,
and thinks the devil nothing." (Dec. Ist, 1541.)
" Satan has attempted our prior's life, by throwing
do»vn a large slip of wall upon him ; but God mira-
culously preserved him." (July 4th, 1524.)
— «" The cx'azed, the halt, the blind, and the dumb,
are all possessed with demons. Physicians who
treat these infirmities as arising from natural
causes, are fools, who know not the mighty power
of the devil." (July Uth, 1528.) "There are
places in many countries where devils have taken
up their abode. Evil spirits abound in Prussia.
In Switzerland, on a lofty mountain not far from
Lucerne, is a lake, called Pilate's pool, where the
devil has made a fearful settlement. There is a
like pool in my country, into which if you cast a
stone, a sudden tempest arises, and the whole sur-
rounding couutry shakes. 'Tis the dwelling of
imprisoned devils." " On Good Friday, at Susseu,
the devil bore off three squires, who had sold them-
selves to him." (a.d. ISSfJ.) On the occasion of a
tempest, Luther said, " This is the devil's work ;
winds are nothing else than good and bad spirits.
The devil puffs and blows." " Two noblemen had
sworn to kill one another. The devil having killed
one of them in his bed, with the other's sword, the
survivor was brought forth into the market-place,
where they dug up and carried off the ground
covered by his shadow, and then banished him.
This is called civil death. Dr. Gi'egory Bruck,
chancellor of Saxony, told Luther this." Then come
two stories of persons who were warned beforehand
that they would be borne off by the devil, and who,
notwithstandiiig they had received the huly sacrament,
and that their friends watched by tlmm with wax tapers,
and in prayer, were borne off on the day and hour
indicated. " The devil tormented our Lord himself.
But, provided he bear not off the soul, all is well."
-— a '£i|,g devil leads people about in their sleep, iu
such sort that they act exactly as if they were
awake. The papists, formerly, in their supersti-
tion, said that such persons could not have been
baptized, or that they must have been so by a
drunken priest." " In the Low Countries, and in
Saxony, there is a monstrous dog which smells out
the dying, and prowls around the house. . . ."
" Some monks were taking to their monastery one
possessed. The devil that was iu him said to the
monks, ' 0 my brothers, what have I done to you?'"
They were talking at Luther's table one day how
one of a party of gentlemen, who were riding out,
exclaimed, clapping spurs to his horse, " The devil
take the hindmost !" He was left the last, and the
devil snatched up horse and all, and bore them off.
Luther observed, " We should not ask Satan to our
table. He comes without invitation. Devils swarm
around us ; and we ourselves, who are daily watch-
ing and praying, liave enough to do with him."
" An aged priest, at his prayers one day, heard the
devil behind him, trying to hinder him, and grunt-
ing as loud as a whole drove of pigs. He turned
round without manifesting the least alarm, and
said, ' Master devil, you have caught what you de-
served ; you were a fine angel, and now you are a
filthy hog.' The grunting stopped at once, for the
devil cannot bear to be mocked. . . . Faith makes
him weak as a child." " The devil dreads God's
word. He cannot bite it ; it breaks his teeth."
"A young, ill-conditioned scapegrace was carous-
ing in a tavern one day with some friends. Having
drunk out his money, he said that he would sell his
soul to any who would pay a good round score for
him. Shortly after, a man entered the tavern, and
sitting down to drink with him, asked if he really
meant that he would sell his soul ? He answered
boldly, ' Yes ;' and the man paid for his drink the
whole day. In the evening, when his victim was
drunk, the unknown said to the others present,
' Gentlemen, what think you now ; if I buy a horse,
have I not a right to the saddle and bridle as well {'
They were exceedingly alarmed at these words ;
but, as the stranger pressed them, at last stammered
out iu the affirmative ; upon which the devil (for it
was he) seized the unfortunate wretch, and bore
him off with him through the ceiling." " Another
time, Luther told of a soldier who had entrusted his
money to his landlord in the Brandenburg ; but
when he asked for it back, the latter denied ever
having had it. The soldier in his rage assaulted
him violently, and the knave had him taken up on a
charge of having violated the domestic peace (Haus-
friede). Whilst the soldier was in prison, the
devil appeared to him, and said, ' To-morrow, thou
wilt be condemned to death, and executed. If thou
wilt sell me thy soul and body, I will set thee free.'
The soldier refusing, the devil said to him, ' If
thou wilt not, at any rate take the advice I give
thee. To-morrow, when thou shalt be brought up
for trial, I will be near you in a blue cap with a
white feather. Ask the judge to allow me to plead
for thee, and I will get thee out of the scrape.'
The soldier did so ; and, on the morrow, as his
landlord persisted iu denying all knowledge of the
deposit, blue cap said to him, ' Friend, how canst
thou perjure thyself so 1 The soldier's money is in
thy bed under the bolstex'. Send some one to
search, my lord judge, and the truth of what I say
will be made manifest.' Accordingly the money
was found there, and brought into court. On this,
blue cap said with a grin, ' I knew that I should
have either the one or the other,' and straightway
twisted the landlord's neck, and bore him off."
After telling this story, Luther added, that he dis-
approved of all swearing by the devil, as many were
in the habit of doing : " For," he said, " the varlet
is never far ofif ; there is no need of painting him
when he is always present."
"There were two students at Erfurth; one of
whom was so passionately fond of a girl as to be
like to lose his wits. The other, who was a sorcerer,
though his companion knew nothing of it, said, ' If
you will promise not to kiss her or take her in
your arms, I will get her to come to you,' and the
intei'view took place. The lover, who was a fine
young man, received her with so much passion,
and spoke to her so tenderly, that the sorcerer was
kept in a fever of fear lest he should embrace her,
which, at last, unable to contain himself, he did :
70
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
on the moment, she fell down dead. They were
greatly alarmed ; but the sorcerer said, ' Let us try
our last i-esource,' and then the devil, through his
agency, reconveyed her home, where she continued
to go about her usual occupations, but was deadly
pale, and never uttered a word. After three days
had passed thus, her parents sent for some godly
ministers, who had no sooner interrogated the
maid than the devil came out of her, and she fell
down a stiff and offensive corpse." " Doctor Luke
Gauric, the sorcerer you sent for from Italy, has
often acknowledged to me that his master used to
hold convei'sations with the devil." " The devil
can take the form of either man or woman; so as
to make a man think that he is lying with a woman
of flesh and blood, when it is a vain form ; for, as
St. Paul says, the devil is on good terms with the
sons of perdition. As cliildren or devils are fre-
quently the issue of such unions, commerce of the
kind is revolting and horrible. Thus what we call
the niv, lures women and virgins into the waters
to procreate little devils. The devil, likewise,
steals away children, during the first six weeks
after their birth, and substitutes others in their
place, called siipposititii, and, by the Saxons, k'U-
kropf."
" Eight years ago, I myself saw and touched a
child at Dessau, that had no parents and had come
of the devil. He was twelve years old, and alto-
gether like any other child. He did nothing but
eat; and would eat as much as any four working
men. If any one touched him, he cried out as one
possessed. If any thing went wrong in the house,
he would laugh and be merry; but, when all went
on well, he was always moping and in tears. I ob-
served to the princes of Anhalt, ' Were I in
authority here, I would have that child thrown
into the Moldau, and run the risk of committing
murder.' But the elector of Saxony and the
princes thought differently. I then recommended
them to have prayers offered up in the church,
imploring the Lord to take away the demon; and
prayers were daily put for a year, at the end of
which time the child died." After the doctor had
told this story, some one asked him, why he wish-
ed to have the child thrown into the river. " Be-
cause," he replied, " I believe childi-en of this kind
to be nothing else than a soulless lump of flesh. The
devil is able to produce such things, just as he can
depi'ive men of their senses by taking possession
of their bodies: in the same manner that he enters
men and makes them deaf and dumb for a time,
so does he enter and animate these lumps of
flesh. The devil must be very powerful to keep
our spirits pi'isoners on this wise. Origen, as I
conceive, has not thoroughly comprehended this
power; otherwise, he would not have thought that
the devil might obtain pardon on the last day.
What a deadly sin to have rebelled, knowingly,
as he did, against his God, his Creator!" " There
was a man in Saxony, near Halberstadt, who had
a kilkropff. This child could drain its mother and
five other women of their milk, and would devour
whatever was given it besides. The man was
advised to make a pilgrimage to Holckelstadt to
vow his kilkropff io the Virgin Mary, and to have
it nursed there. So he bore off his child in a
basket; but, as he crossed a bridge, another devil
that was in the river began crying out, 'Kilkropff !
kilkropff! ' The child in the basket, who had
never been known to utter a single word, answer-
ed, ' Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! ' The devil in the river then
asked, ' Where are you going ? ' The child in the
basket, who had never yet spoken a single word,
answei'ed, ' I am going to Holckelstadt, to our
dearest mother, to nurse.' The man, in his alarm,
tossed child and basket into the river; on which
the two devils made off together, crying out, ' Oh!
Oh! Oh! ' and tumbling one over the othei-."
One Sunday as Luther was going out of church
he was accosted by a landsknecht, who complained
of being constantly tempted of the devil, and told
how he often came to him, and threatened to bear
him away. Whilst he was telling his tale. Dr.
Pomer, who was passing by, joined Luther in
giving him words of comfort. " Despair not,"
they said ; " for despite the temptations of the
devil, you are not his. Our Lord Jesus Christ
was tempted of him as well, but by God's grace
overcame him. Defend yourself, in like manner,
by God's word and by prayer." Luther added,
" When the devil torments you, and threatens to
bear you off, answer, ' I am Jesus Clirist's, my
Lord's ; in him I believe, and I shall one day be
near him. He has himself said that no power can
take Christians from his care.' Think more on
God, who is in heaven, than on the devil ; and be
no longer alarmed by his wiles. I know that he
would be glad to bear you off, but he cannot. He
is like a thief who longs to lay his hand on a rich
man's strong box ; the will is not lacking, but the
power. And even so, God will not allow the devil
to do you any harm. Attend faithfully on the
preaching of the divine word, pray fervently,
work, avoid too much solitude, and you will see
that God will deliver you from Satan, and preserve
you of his fold." A farrier, a young man, asserted
that a spectre constantly pursued him through the
streets. Luther sent for him, and questioned him
before many learned persons. The young man
said that the spectre had reproached him with
committing sacrilege, in having partaken the com-
munion in both kinds, and had told him, " If you
go back to your master's house, I will break your
neck," and that he had therefore kept away for
several days. The doctor, after much questioning,
said, " Beware of lying, my friend ; fear God,
attend the preaching of his word; return to your
master's; apply yourself to your work; and if Satan
troubles you again, say to him, ' I will not obey
you, I will only obey God, who has called me to
this way of life ; I will stick close to my work, and
were an angel to come, he should not tempt me
from it.' "
Dr. Luthei', as he advanced in life, experienced
ew temptations from men ; but, as he himself
states, the devil would walk with him in the dormi-
tory of the cloister, vex and tempt him. There
were one or two devils who used to watch him,
and when they could not reach his heart, they
would clutch his head and torment it. . . " These
things happened to me often. If I happened to
have a knife in my hand, evil thoughts would enter
my mind. Frequently I could not pray : the devil
would drive me out of the room. For we have to
do with great devils, who are doctors of divinity.
The Turks and the papists have devilkins, who
are no doctors, but only lawyers." ..." I know,
thanks to God, that my cause is good and holy.
If Christ is not in heaven, and is not Lord of the
>.
TEMPTATIONS.
77
world, I am in a bad predicament. The devil
often presses me so hard in dispute, that I break
out into a sweat. I am kept conscious of his con-
stant animosity. He lies closer to me than my
Catherine, and troubles me more than she joys
me. ... At times, he urges, ' The Law is also
God's word ;• why always oppose the Gospel to it V
' Yes,' say I in my turn, ' but it is as far from the
Gospel as earth from heaven.' " " The devil, in
truth, has not graduated full doctor, still he is
very learned and deeply experienced ; for he has
been pi-actising his trade these six thousand years.
If the devil have sometimes come out of those
possessed when conjured by monks and popish
priests, leaving some sign after him, as a broken
pane of glass, or a strip of wall thrown down, it
was only to make people suppose that he had quitted
the body, but, in reality, to take possession of the
mind, and to confirm men in their superstitions." \
In January, 1532, Luther fell dangerously ill ;
and the physician feared it would end in apo-
plectic seizure. Melanchthon and Rozer, who
were near his bed, happening to allude to the joy
which the news of his death would occasion the
papists, he said to them with an assured tone, " I
know for a surety I shall not die yet. God will
not at present-confirm the abomination of papistry
by my death. He will not, after those of Zwingle
and CEcolampadius, grant the papists fresh cause
for triumph, Satan's whole thought, it is true, is
to make away with me ; he never quits me. I3ut
it is not his will which will be fulfilled, but the
sword's !" " My illness — vertigoes and other at-
tacks of the kind — is not natural. Whatever I take
does me no good, although I am careful to observe
my physician's advice." In 1536, he ofliciated at
the marriage of duke Philip of Pomerania with
the elector's sister, at Torgau. In the middle of
the ceremony, the wedding-ring slipped from his
hand and rolled on the ground. He was terror-
struck for a moment, but recovered, saying,
" Hearken, devil, this is no business of thine, 'tis
trouble lost," and he went on with the service.
"Whilst Dr. Luther was talking at table with
some friends, his wife, who had gone out, fell into
a swoon. When she came to herself, the doctor
enquired what her thoughts had been like ; and
she related how she had experienced those peculiar
temptations which are the certain signs of death,
and which strike at the heart more surely than
ball or arrow. ... * I advise,' he said, ' all who
feel such temptations, to encourage lively thoughts,
to take a cheerful draught, to take recreation, or
else apply themselves to some honourable study ;
but the best remedy, is to believe in Jesus Christ.' "
" When the devil finds me idle and inattentive to
God's word, he then vexes me by suggesting
scruples as to the lawfulness of my doctrine, as to
my having humbled and reduced authority, and
been the cause of so many scandals and dis-
turbances. But when 1 lay hold on God's word
again, then I win the match. I battle with the
devil, and say, ' What is all the world to God,
however great it may be ! He has made his Son
its lord and king. If the world seek to depose
him, God will reduce it to ashes. Kiss the Son,
lest he be amjry. . . Be wise noic, therefore, 0 ye kings,
TAKE YOURSELVES TO TASK, ye judges of the eca-tii,"
(the erudimini, be instructed, of the Vulgate, is
less forcible). . .."Above all, the devil strives to
deprive me of my doctrine on the remission of
sins. ' What /' he suggests, 'preach what no one
has taught for all these centuries ! Shotdd it be offen-
sive to God .'' " ..." Of a night, when I awake,
the devil soon comes and begins arguing with me,
and putting strange thoughts into my head, until I
fly into a passion, and say, ' Kiss my ; God is
not as vexed with me as tbou sayest !' " This
moi-ning when I awoke, the devil said to me,
' Thou art a sinner.' I answered, ' Tell me some-
thing new, demon, I knew that before. . . I have
enow real sins to answer for without thy inventing
others for me.' ... He went on with, ' What
hast thou done with the monasteries V To which
I replied, " What's that to thee ? Thou seest
that thy accursed worship goes on as ever ?' "
The conversation turning one evening at supper
on the sorcerer Faustus, Luther said, in a serious
manner, " The devil does not use enchanters
against me. If he could injure me by their
means, he would long since. He has often laid
hold of me by the head, but has been forced
to let me go. I have had ample experience what
kind of companion the devil is. He has often
squeezed me so hard, that I have not known
whether I was dead or alive. At times, he has
cast me into such despair, that I have not known
whether there was a God, and have utterly
doubted our dear Lord. But, with the aid of
God's word," &c. " The devil sets the law, sin,
and death, before my eyes, compels me to ponder
on this trinity, and makes use of it to torment
me." "The devil has sworn my death ; but he
will crack a hollow nut." " The temptation of the
flesh is little ; the remedy at hand. Eustochia
would have cured St. Jerome. But God shield
us from the great temptations which involve eter-
nity ! Tried by them, one knows not whether
God be the devil, or the devil God. Such trials
are not passing ones." " When I incline to think
on worldly or family matters, I recur to a psahn,
or some comfortable saying of St. Paul's, and
sleep thereon. But the thoughts suggested by the
devil are harder to be overcome ; and I can only
escape from them by some buff'oonery or other."
" The barleycorn suff'ers much from man. It is
first cast into the earth to rot ; then, when it is
ripe, it is cut, threshed, dried, and steeped, in
order to turn it into beer, for drunkards to
swill. Flax is, also, a martyr in its way. When
ripe, it is plucked up, steeped, dried, beaten,
heckled, carded, spun, woven, and made up into
cloth for shirts and shifts, &c. When these ai-e
worn out, the rags are used for lint, or for spread-
ing plasters for sores, or for tinder, or are sold to
the paper-maker, who bruises, dissolves, and then
converts them into paper, which is devoted to
writing, or to printing, or to making playing cards,
and lastly, is torn up and applied to the vilest uses.
These plants, as well as other creatures, which are
very useful to us, have much to suff'er. Even so,
good and pious Christians have much to endure
from the wicked and impious."
" When the devil comes to me of a night, I give
■^ira these and the like answers, and say, 'Devil ! I
must now sleep, for the same is God's command
and ordinance, to labour by day, and to rest and
sleep by night.' Then, if he charge me with being
a sinner, 1 say to spite him, ' Holy Satan, pray for
me ;' or else, ' Physician, cure thyself!' " " If you
78
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
would comfoi't one who is tempted, you must kill
Moses and stone him ; if, ou the contrary, he
becomes himself again, and forgets his temptation,
you must preach the law to him ; for 'affliction is
not to be added to the afflicted.' " " The best way
to expel the devil, if he will not depart for texts
from Holy Scripture, is to jeer and flout him."
" Those tried by temptations may be comforted by
generous living ; but this will not do for all, espe-
cially not for the young. As for myself, who am
now in years, a cheerful cup will drive away my
temptations, and give me a sound sleep." " The
best cure for temptations is to begin talking about
other matters, as of Marcolphus, the Eulenspiegel,
and other drolleries of the kind, &c. The devil
is a melancholy spirit, and cheerful music soon
puts him to flight."
The following important document is in a man-
ner the history of the obstinate war which Satan
waged upon Luther the whole of his life :
Preface written by Doctor Martin Luther be-
fore his death. " Whoever reads with attention
ecclesiastical history, the books of the holy
fathers, and particularly the Bible, will see
clearly, that ever since the commencement of
the Church events have always taken the same
turn. Wherever the word of God has made itself
heard, and God has brought together a band of
the faithful, the devil has quickly perceived the
divine ray, and has begun to chafe, and blow, and
raise tempests from every quarter, trying, with all
his might, to extinguish the same. In vain we
stop up one or two rents; he will find another
and another; still noise and ever mischief. There
never yet has been an end to this, and there never
will, till the day of judgment. I hold that I my-
self (let alone the ancients) have undergone more
than twenty hurricanes, twenty diff"erent assaults
of the devil. First, I had the papists against me.
Every one knows, I suppose (pretty nearly), how
many tempests of books and of bulls the devil has,
through them, hurled against me, and in what a
terrible manner they have devoured and torn me
to pieces. It is true that I also sometimes blew,
gently though, against them; but it was no good;
they were the more irritated, and blew again more
violently, vomiting forth flames and fire. It has
been so, without interruption, to this present hour.
I had begun to hope for a calm from these out-
breaks of the devil, when he made a fresh attack
through Miinzer and his revolt, which failed though
to extinguish the light. Chx-ist himself healed that
breach; when, lo ! in the person of Carlstadt, he
came and broke my window-panes. There he was,
bellowing and storming, so that I thought he was
come to put out light, wax, and tinder at once.
But God was at hand to aid his poor little light,
nor would he permit it to be extinguished. Then
came the Sacramentarians and the Anabaptists,
who broke open doors and windows to put out this
light. Again it was in great danger, but, thanks
be to God, their spite was again disappointed.
Others, again, have raged against the old masters,
against the pope, and Luther, all at once, as Ser-
vetus, Campanus. ... As to those who have not
assailed me publicly in printed books, but from
whom I have borne in private letters and discourses
filled with indignities, I shall not attempt to enume-
rate them here. It is enough to say that I have
now learned, by experience (I would not believe
the accounts from history), that the Church, for
the love of the word and of the blessed light, must
never expect repose, but be ever on the look-out
for fresh outrages from the devil; for so it has
been from the beginning.
" And though I should live a hundred years
longer, and should quiet all these storms, past, pre-
sent, and to come, I see clearly that this would not
secure rest for those who come after me, so long as
the devil lives and reigns. Therefore it is that I
pray God to grant me to live one short hour in a
state of grace; I ask no longer life. You who
come after us pray to God with fervour, and dili-
gently walk in his commandments. Guard well the
poor candle of the Lord, for the devil neither sleeps,
rests, and will not die until the final judgment.
You and I shall die; and, after we are gone, he will
be the same that he has always been, ever raging
against the Gospel. ... I see him from afar,
blowing, puffing, and swelling out his cheeks, till he
becomes red in the face; but our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, who, at the beginning, smote him on
his audacious visage, still maintains the combat
with him, and will for ever. He who cannot lie
has said: 'I will be with you to the end of the
world; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
thee.' And in St. John he says: 'My sheep shall
never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of
my hand.' And again, in St. Matthew, x.; 'All the
hairs of your head are counted.' . . . ' Fear not,
then, for those who can kill the body.' Neverthe-
less, it is commanded us to watch and keep this
light as long as it is in us. It is said: ' Vigilate ;
the devil is as a I'oaring lion, seeking whom he may
devour.' Such was he when St. Peter pronounced
this of him, and such he is and will be to the end
of the world. . . ."
(Luther then reverts to the subject of succour
from God, without which, all our efforts are vain,
and he continues thus :) " You and I were
nothing a thousand years ago, and yet the Church
has been saved without us, It has been so through
the power of him of whom it is said : He7i nt hodie.
It is the same now ; it is not we who preserve thf
Church, for we could not reach the devil who is
in the pope, and in seditious and all wicked people.
The Church would pei'ish before our eyes, and we
with her, was it not for some higher power that
protects it. We must leave Him to act, of whom it
is said. Qui erit heri, nt hodie. (The same yesterday,
and to-day, and for ever.) It is a lamentable thing to
see our pride and our audacity, after the terrible and
shameful examples of those, who, in their vanity,
have believed that the Church was built upon
themselves. ... To speak only of these times,
how did Miinzer end ? he who thought the Church
would fall if he were not here to suppoi't and go-
vern it ? And more recently still, have not the
Anabaptists been a terrible and sufficient warning
to us, to remind us how subtle a devil is at our
elbow, how dangerous are our high thoughts, and
how needful it is (as Isaiah says), that we look well
into our hands when we pick up anything, to see if
it be God or an idol, gold or clay ? But all these
warnings are lost upon us ; we go on in full secu-
rity. Yes, without doubt, the devil is far from us ;
we have none of the same flesh which was even in
St. Paul, and from which he could not separate
himself, spite of all his efforts. (Rom. vii.) But we,
we are heroes; we need not trouble ourselves about
the flesh, and carnal thoughts; we are pure spirits,
we liold captives at once the flesh and the devil,
and whatever comes into our heads, is the im-
maculate inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And this
all ends so well, that horse and rider both break
their necks,
" The Papists, I know, will here tell me, ' Well !
thou seest ; it is thou that complainest of troubles
and seditions ! Who has caused them, if not thou
and thy doctrine V Behold the cunning artifice by
which they think to overthrow Luther's doctrine
from top to bottom. It matters not ! let them ca-
lumniate ; let them lie as much as they will ; they
must, at last, hold their peace. According to this
grand argument, all the prophets also were here-
tical and seditious, for they were held as such by
their own people ; as such, they were persecuted,
and mostly put to death. Jesus Christ, our Lord,
was himself obliged to hear it said by the Jews,
and in particular by the high priests, the pharisees,
and scribes, &c., by those highest in power, that
he had a devil, that he cast out devils by other de-
vils, that he was a Samaritan, the companion of
publicans and sinners. He was also, in the end,
condemned to die upon the cross for blasphemy
and sedition. ' Which of the prophets,' said St.
Stephen to the Jews, who were about to stone him,
* which have not your fathers persecuted and slain ?
and you, their chiMren, ye have sold and killed
that Just One, whose coming those prophets fore-
told.' The apostles and the disciples have not
fared better than their Master; and his predictions
were fulfilled in them. . . If thus it must be, and
Scripture assures us it must, why be astonished if
we also, who in these terrible times preach Jesus,
and declare ourselves his followers, are, like him,
persecuted and condemned as heretics, and dis-
turbers of the public peace ! What are we com-
pared with these sublime spirits, enlightened by
the Holy Ghost, endowed with so many admirable
gifts, and with so fervent a faith ? . . . Let us, then,
not be ashamed of the calumnies and injuries with
which our enemies pursue us. Let all this be
without terror for us. But let us regard it as our
highest glory to receive from the world the same re-
ward which the saints have had from the beginning,
for their faithful services. Let us rejoice in God
that we also, poor sinners, and despised of men,
have been thought worthy to suffer ignominy for
Christ's name's sake ! . . .
" The papists, with their grand argument, are
like a man who should say that if God had not
created good angels, there would have been no
devils ; because, it was from among the good
angels that they came. In like manner, Adam
accused God of having given him the woman; as
if, had God not created Adam and Eve, they would
not have sinned. It would follow, from this fine
reasoning, that God alone was the sinner, and
that Adam and his children were all pure, and
pious, and holy. From Luther's doctrine there
have arisen many troublesome and rebellious
spirits; therefore, they say Luther's doctrine is of
the devil. But St. John says also (1 Ep. ii.): ' They
went out from us, but are not of us.' Judiis was
one of Christ's disciples; then, according to their
argument, Jesus Christ is a devil. No heretic has
ever gone out from the pagans ; they have gone out
from the holy Christian Church ; the Church,
therefore, must be the work of the devil! It was
the same with the Bible under the pope; it was
publicly denounced as an heretical book, and
accused of giving couutenance to the most damnable
errors. And now the cry is ' The Church ! the
Church! against and above the Bible!' Emser,
j the wise Emser, did not know well what to say
I about the Bible being translated into German: per-
haps he had not made up his mind whether it were
i right it should ever have Jieen written in Hebrew,
i Greek, or Latin. The Bible and the Church do not
I agree too well together. If, then, the Bible, the book
; and the word of the Holy Ghost, basso much to en-
dure from them, what have we to complain of their-
imputing to us the heresies and seditions which
break out ? The spider draws its poison from the
sweet and lovely rose, where the bee finds only
honey. Is it the fault of the flower, if its honey
turns to poison in the spider ?
I " It is, as the proverb says, * The dog we want
to punish has stolen some meat;' or, as ^sop
[ finely says, 'The sheep that the wolf would eat has
troubled the waters, although standing at the
i bottom of the stream.' They who have filled the
\ Church with errors, bloodshed, lies, and murder,
are not the troublers of the waters; but we — we
who have withstood sedition and heresy. Wolf,
eat; eat, my friend, and may a bone stick in thy
throat. . . . They cannot act differently; such is
the world and its god. If they have called the
master of the house Beelzebub, will they treat his
servants better ? And if the Holy Scriptures have
been called heretical, how can we expect oui-
books to be honoured ? The living God is the
judge of all; he will one day make it clear whether
we are to believe the witness of this heretical book
called the Holy Scriptures.
" May Jesus Christ, our beloved Saviour and
keeper of our souls, bought by his precious blood,
keep his little flock faithful to his holy word; to the
end that it may increase, and grow in grace, in know-
ledge, and in faith. May he vouchsafe to support
it against the temptations of Satan and this world,
and to take pity on the profound lamentations and
the agonizing longings with which it sighs for the
happy day of the glorious coming of our Saviour,
when the fury and murderous bites of the serpents
shall cease at last; and for the children of God
shall begin that revelation of liberty and heavenly
bliss for which we hope, and for which we wait
with longsuffering and patience. Amen. Amen."
HIS AILMENTS.-
CHAPTER VII.
-LONGIKGS FOR DEATH AND JUDGMENT.-
DEATH, A.D. 1546.
"Both tooth-ache and earache are cruel ail-
ments ; I would rather have the plague or the .
When I was at Coburg, in 1530, I suff'ered much
from a noise and whizzing in my ears, as if wind
was escaping from my head. . . . The devil had a
hand in it." " When ill, one should eat well, and
drink wine." He treated himself on this plan at
Smalkalde, in 1537. A man complaining to him
one day of the itch, Luther said, " I would give
ten florins to change with you ; you know not how
distressing vertigo is. At this very moment, I
am unable to read a letter through at once,
80
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
1
indeed, I cannot read more than two or three
lines of my Psalter ; for when I make the attempt,
such a buzzing comes on in my ears, that I am
often on the point of falling from my seat. The
itch, on the contrary, is a useful thing," &c.
At dinner, after preaching at Smalkalde, he was
attacked by a violent fit of the stone, and prayed
fervently : " 0 my God, my Lord Jesus, thou
knowest how zealously I have taught thy word.
If it be for the glory of thy vame, come to my aid ;
if not, deign to close my eyes. / shall die the
enemy of thy enemies, and hating the accursed one,
the pope, who has set himself above Christ." He
then improvised four Latin verses on the subject.
" My head swims so, and is so weak, that I can no
longer read or write, especially fasting." (Feb. 9th,
1543.) " I am weak, and weary of life, and think
of bidding farewell to the world, which is now
wholly the devil's. May the Lord grant me favour-
able weatlier and a happy passage. Amen !"
(March 14th.)
To Amsilorff. " I am writing to thee after sup-
per ; for, fasting, I cannot even look at a book
without danger. I am much surprised at this
illness of mine, and know not whether it be a
buffet of Satan's, or a natural wealmess." (August
18th.) " 1 believe my true malady to be old age ;
and, next to this, my overpowering labours and
thoughts, but, mainly, the Ijuffets of Satan ; and
all the physic in the world cannot cure me of
these." (Nov. 7th, 1543.)
To Spcdatin. " I must say, that in all my life,
and all my cares about the Gospel, I have never
gone through so troubled a year as that which has
just ended. I have a tremendous quarrel on
hand with the lawyers on the subject of private
marriages ; in those whom I had believed to be
stedfast friends of the Gospel, I find cruel enemies.
Dost thou think that this is no pain to me, dear
Spalatin ?" (Jan. 30th, 1544.) " I am idle, worn
out, cold ; that is to say, old and useless. I have
finished my journey ; it only remains for the Lord
to gather me to my fathers, and to render unto
corruption and the worms their share in me. I
am satiated with life, if this be life. Pray for me,
that my last moments may be salutary to myself
and acceptable unto God. My only thoughts about
the empei'or and the empire are commending
them to God in my prayers. The world seems to
me to have arrived at its last hour, and, to use the
psalmist's expression, to have grown old like a
garment ; and now is the time come that we must
change it." (Dec. 5th, 1544.) " Had I known at
the beginning what enemies men are to God's
word, I should indisputably have been silent, and
held my peace. I imagined they only sinned
through ignorance."
He once said, " Nobles, citizens, peasants, I
might add almost all men, think they know the
Gospel better than Dr. Luther or St. Paul himself;
and look down on pastors, rather on the Lord and
Master of pastors. . . . The nobles seek to govern,
and yet know not how. The pope knows how to
govern, and does govern. The least papist is more
capable of governing than — I cry them mercy —
ten of our court nobles." Luther was one day told
that there were six hundred rich cures vacant in
the bishopric of Wurtzburg. " No good will come
of this," he said. " It will be the same with us if we
go on despising God's word and his servants. If I
desired to become rich, all I should have to do would
be not to preach. . . The ecclesiastical visitors asked
the peasants wherefore they would not support
their pastors, when they kept cowherds and swine-
herds ? ' Oh !' they said, ' we want these ; we
cannot do without them.' They thought they
could do without pastors."
For six months Luther preached in his house to
his own family every Sunday, but not in the
church. "I do this," he said to Dr. Jonas, "to
clear my conscience, and discharge my duty as
the father of a family. But I know and see that
God's word will not be more minded here than in
church." " You will have to succeed me as
preacher, Dr. Jonas ; think on it, and acquit
yourself well." He walked out of church one day,
in anger at the people's talking (a.d. 1545). On
the 1 6th of February, 1546, Luther remarked that
Aristotle had written no better book than the fifth
of his Ethica, where he gives this beautiful defi-
nition, " The virtue of justice consists in mode-
ration, as regulated by wisdom." (This eulogium
on moderation in the last year of Luther's life
is very remarkable.)
The count von Mansfeld's chancellor, on his
return from the diet of Frankfort, said at Luther's
table, at Eisleben, that the emperor and the pope
were sudden in their proceedings against the bishop
of Cologne, Herman, and were thinking of expelling
him from his electorate. On this, Luther said,
" They have lost the game. Unable to do aught
against us with God's word and Holy Scripture,
they are attacking us with wisdom, violence, craft,
practisings, deceit, force and arms {ergo xolunt sa-
pientia, t'lolentia, astutia, practica, dolo, vi et armis
pugnare). What says our Lord to this ? He sees
that he is only a poor scholar, and he .says, ' What
will become of my son and I ?' . . . For me, when
they shall kill me, they must first eat ... I enjoy
a great advantage ; my lord is called Schlejiemini ;
it is he who said, I will call ye up on the last day
{ego siisc'itabo ros in norissimo die) ; and he will then
say. Dr. Martin, Dr. Jonas, Sir Michael Coelius
come to me, and he will call each of you by your own
name, as the Lord Christ says in St. John, And he
calls them by their names. Be ye, then, without fear.
.... God holds a fine hand of cards, which is com-
posed only of kings, princes, &c. He shuffles the
cards, for instance, the pope with Luther; and then
he does as children, who, after having held the cards
for a time in vain, tire of the game and throw them
under the table." " The woi'ld is like a drunken
peasant: put him up on his saddle on one side, he
tumbles over on the other. No matter what way
you set about it, you can't help him. The world
will be the devil's."
Lutlier often said that it would be a great disgrace
to the pope were he to die in his bed. " All of you,
thou pope, thou devil, ye kings, princes, and lords,
are Luther's enemies, and yet you can do him no
harm. It was not so with John Huss. I take it
that there has not been a man so hated as I for
these hundred years. I, too, hate the world. In
the whole round of life, there is nothing which
gives me pleasure ; I am sick of living. May our
Lord then come quickly, and take me with him.
May he, above all, come with his day of judgment.
I would stretch forth my neck ... so that he
hurled his thunderbolt and I were at rest. . . ."
He proceeds to console himself for the ingratitude
HIS DESPONDENCY.
81
of the world, by reflecting on the fates of Moses,
Samuel, St. Paul, and of Christ. A guest of his
said, that if the world were to last fifty years, many
things might yet turn up. " God forbid," exclaimed
Luther, " it would be worse than all the past.
Thei-e would arise many other sects, which are now
hidden within the hearts of men. May the Lord
come, and cut all this short, for there is no hope of
improvement !" " Life will be such a burthen,
that there will be one universal cry from all the
corners of the earth, ' Good God ! come with the
day of judgment !' And, happening to have in his
hand a chaplet of white agates, he added, ' God
grant that day may soon come. I would eat this
chaplet to have it to be to-morrow."
Speaking at his table of eclipses, and the little
influence they appeai-ed to have on the death of
kings and other great people, the doctor replied,
"You are right; eclipses no longer pi'oduce any
sensible effects ; and I think myself that our
Saviour will come soon to veritable effects; and
that ere long the judgment will put an end to all
our cogitations, and all things else. I dreamt it was
so the other day while I lay asleep in the afternoon,
and I said then in pace in id ipsum requiescam seu
dormiam. The day of judgment must soon come;
for that the papal Church should reform is an im-
possibility, neither will the Turks and Jews. ... In
fact, there is no real improvement in the state of
the empire; and see, for thirty years now have
they assembled diets without deciding on any
thing. ... I often think when ruminating in my
walks of what I ought to ask in my prayers for the
diet. The bishop of Mentz is naught; the pope
is lost for ever. I see nothing else to be done but
to say, ' Lord, thy kingdom come 1 ' "
" Poor, helpless creatures that we are, we eat
our bread but in sin. Our first seven years of life
we do nothing but eat, drink, sleep, and play.
Thence to one-and-twenty, we go to school three
iir four hours a day; then follow as our passions
lead — love or drink. After this, only, we begin
seriously to work. Towards fifty, we have done,
and turn children again! Add to all this that we
sleep away half of our lives! Oh! out upon us!
Out of our lives we do not give even a tithe to
God; and do we think to merit Heaven by our
good works ? What have I been doing now 1
I have been prating for two hours, have been eat-
ing for three, and have been idle for four ! Ah !
Domine, ne intres in judicium cum servo Uio." (Oh!
Lord, enter not into judgment with thy servant.)
After detailing all his sufferings to Melanchthon,
he exclaims, " Please God to take my soul in the
peace of Christ, by the grace of God I am ready to
go; yea, desirous. I have lived and have finished
the course marked out for me by God. . . . Oh
may my soul, which is weary of its long pilgrim-
age, now be suffered to mount to heaven." (April
18th, 1541.)
" I have not much time, my dear Probst, to
write, for I am overcome by fatigue and old
age: alt, halt, ungestalt (old, cold, mouldy), as they
say. Nevertheless, rest T cannot have, beset as I
am by so many reasons and obligations to write.
[ know more than you can of the fataUties that
await this age. The world is threatened with
ruin; it is inevitable; the more the devil is allowed
•o roam, the more brutish the world becomes.
There is but one consolation left us; it is that this
day is nigh. The world has been sated with God's
word, and taken a strange antipathy to it. Fewer
false prophets arise. Why raise up new heresies
when there is an epicurean disdain of the world?
Germany is dead; she will never again be what she
has been. The nobles only think of extorting; the
towns think but of themselves (and with reason):
so that the kingdom is divided against itself, just
when it ought to be confronting the legion of un-
chained devils which compose the Turkish army.
We seem to care little if God be for or agaijist us,
and think we shall triumph by our own strength
over Turks, the devils, God, and every thing: such
are the overweening confidence and stupid security
of expiring Germany! And we, what can we do
in the matter ? Complaints and tears are equally
fruitless. All that is left for us to do is to reiterate
the prayer, ' Thy will be done * ! ' " (March 26th,
1542.) " I see, in every one, an indomitable
cupidity, which to me seems one sign of the
approach of the last day. It is as if the world in
its old age and at its last gasp, became delirious; as
so often happens with the dying." (March 8th,
1544.) " I do believe that I am that great trum-
pet which prefaces and announces the coming of
our Lord. Therefore, weak and failing as I may
be, and small as may be the sound that I can
make this world hear, my voice rings in the ears
of the angels in heaven, who will take up the
strain after us and complete the solemn call !
Amen, and Amen." (August 6th, 1545.)
During the last years of Luther's life, liis
enemies often spread reports of his death ; with
the addition of the most singular and ti-agic cir-
cumstances. To refute these, Luther had print-
ed in 1545, in German and Italian, a pamphlet
entitled Lies of the Goths, touching the death of
Dr. Martin Luther. " I tell Dr. Bucer before-
hand, that whoever, after my death, shall despise
the authority of this school and this church, will
be a heretic and unbeliever; for it was here first
that God purified his word and again made it
known. . . . Who could do any thing twenty-five
years since ? Who was on my side twenty-one
years ago ? " "I often count, and find that I
approach nearer and nearer to the forty years, at
the end of which I believe all this will end. St.
Paul only preached for forty years; and so the pro-
phet Jeremiah, and St. Augustin. And when each
of these forty years had come to an end, in which
they had preached the word of God, it was no
longer listened to, iind great calamities followed."
The aged electress, when he was last at her
table, wished him forty years more of life. " I
would not have Heaven," said he, " on condition
that I must live forty years longer I have
nothing to do with doctors now. It seems they
have settled that I am to live one year longer ; so
that I won't make my life a torment, but, in God's
name, eat and drink what I please." — " I would
my adversaries would put an end to me; for my
death now would be of more service to the Church
than my life." (February 16th, 1546.) The con-
versation running much on death and sickness,
* These sad and desponding reflections may almost be
traced in tlie beautiful portrait of Luther, in the collection of
Zimmer, the publisher of Heidelberg. This painting also
expresses the strain produced by the continuation of long
and anxious exertions.
82
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
during his last visit to Eisleben, he said, " If I
return to Witteniberg, I shall soon be in my coftui,
and then I shall give the worms a good meal on a
fat doctor." Two days after this he died, at
Eisleben.
Luther's impromptu on the frailty of life: —
" Dat vitrum vitro Jonae {vitrum ipse) Lutherus,
Se similem ut fragili noscat uterque vitro."
We leave these verses in Latin, as they would lose
all their merit in translation,
A Note written at Eisleben two days before his
death : —
" No one can comprehend Virgil's Bucolics, who
has not been five years a shepherd."
" No one can understand Virgil's Georgics, who
has not been five years a husbandman."
" No one can comprehend Cicero's letters, if he
has not lived twenty years a politician and states-
man."
" Let no one imagine that he has mastered Holy
Scripture, who has not, for a hundred years,
governed the affairs of the Church, with Ellas and
Elisha, with John the Baptist, with Christ and his
apostles."
" Hanc tu ne divinam jEneida tenta,
Sed vestigia pronus adora."
" We are all poor mendicants Hoc est
verum. 16 Februarii, anno 1546."
Prediction of the reverend, father. Doctor Martin
Luther, written in his own hand, and found after his
death, in his library, by those whotn the most illustrious
elector of Saxony, John Frederic /., had entrusted to
search it.
" The time is arrived, at which, according to an-
cient predictions, there must arise after the ap-
pearing of Antichrist, men who will live without
God in the world, every one after his own devices.
The pope has long considered himself a god above
God; and now all wish to do without God, and
especially the Papists. Even we, now that we are
free from the law of the pope, seek to deliver our-
selves from the law of God, and follow only fickle
politicians, and this only so far as our own caprice
dictates. We imagine the times far off of which
such things are predicted ; but I say they are now
at hand ; these godless men are ourselves. There
are amongst us some, who so impatiently desire the
day of Man, as to have begun to exclude fi'om the
church the decalogue and the law ; of these are
Master Eisleben (Agi-icola), &c. I am not uneasy
about the papists ; they flatter the pope, out of
hatred to us, and thereby to gain power until they
will become a terror to the poor pope. ... I feel
great satisfaction when I see these flatterers laying
snares for the pope, more to be dreaded by him
than I myself, who am his declared enemy. It is
the same with us ; my own people give me far
more care and trouble than all the whole papacy
together, which henceforth is powerless against us.
So true it is, that when an empire is about to fall
to ruin, it is chiefly through its own preponderating
weight. Rome, for instance,
" Mole ruit sua ....
.... Corpus magnum populumque potentem
In sua victrici conversum viscera dextra."
Towards the latter end of his life, Luther took
a dislike to Wittemberg. He wrote to his wife, in
July, 1545, from Leipzig, where he was staying :
" Grace and peace to you, my dear Catherine ! our
John will tell you of our joui-ney hither; Ernest von
Schonfeldt received us very kindly at Lobnitz, and
our friend Scherle still more warmly here. I
would fain so manage as never to retui'n to Wit-
temberg. I have no longer any affection for that
town, and I do not like to live there any longer. I
wish you to sell the cottage with the court and gar-
den ; I will give back to my gracious lord the large
house he was so good as to give me, and we will
settle ourselves at Zeilsdorf. We can put our land
in good order by laying out my stipend upon it,
as I think my lord will not fail to continue it at
least for one year ; the which, I firmly believe,
will be the last I shall live. Wittemberg is be-
come an actual Sodom, and I will not return thither.
The day after to-morrow I am going to Merseburg,
on count George's pressing invitation. I would
rather pass my life on the high roads, or in begging
my bread, than have my last moments tormented
by the sight of the depravity of Wittemberg, where
all my pains and labour are thrown away. You
can communicate this to PhiHp and to Pomer, whom
I beg to bless the town iu my name. For my
part, I can no longer live there." It requu-ed the
most earnest entreaties of his friends, of the whole
university, and of the elector, to make him re-
nounce this resolution ; he returned to Wittem-
berg on the 18th of August.
Luther was not allowed to die in peace ; his last
days were painfully employed in the endeavour to
reconcile the two Counts von Mansfeld, whose
subject he was born. He writes to count Albert,
promising him to be at Eisleben: "Eight days more
or less will not stop me, although I am much oc-
cupied elsewhere. I should rest in peace in my
grave if I could first see my dear masters recon-
ciled and made friends." (December 6th, 1545.)
(Fi'om Eisleben.) " To the very learned, and very
profound lady Catherine Luther, my gracious icife.
Dear Catherine, we are much tormented here, and
should not be sorry to get home; however, we must,
I think, remain another eight days. You can say
to Master Philip, that he will not do amiss to cor-
rect his commentary on the Gospel, for in writing
it, he did not know why our Lord, in the Gospel,
calls riches, thorns. This is the school where
such things are learnt. The Holy Scripture
threatens evei'ywhere the thorns of eternal fire ;
this terrifies me, and teaches me patience, for
I must, with the help of God, make every effort to
end well. . . ." (February 6th, 1546.)
" To the gracious lady Catherine Luther, my beloved
wife, who torments herself by far too much. Grace
and peace in the Lord. Dear Catherine ! You must
read St. John, and what is said iu the catechism
of the trust we ought to put in God. You alarm
yourself as if God was not all powerful, and as if
he could not make doctors Martin by dozens, if the
first should be drowned in the Saal, or perish in
any other manner. I have One that takes care of
me better than thou, or any of the angels could do.
One who is seated at the right hand of God Al-
mighty. Be comforted then. Amen. ... I in-
tended setting out yesterday, in ird mea .- but the
misery in which 1 find my native country detains
me. Would you believe it ? I am become a
lawyer. However, it will not answer any great
end ; it would have been better had they left me
A.D. 1546.
HIS DEATH.
83
a theologian. They stand in singular need of
having their pride humbled ; they talk and act as
if they were gods; but if they go on so, I fear they
they will become devils. Lucifer was lost by his
pride, &c Show this letter to Philip; I
have not time to write to him separately." (Feb-
ruary 7th, 1546.)
" To my gentle and dear iclfe, Catherine Luther von
Bora. Grace and peace in our Lord. Dear Cathe-
rine, God willing, we hope to i-eturn to you this
week. He has shown the power of his grace in
this affair. The lords are agreed upon all points,
with the exception of one or two ; among others,
upon the reconciliation of the two brothers, counts
Gebhard and Albert. I am to dine with them
to-day, and I shall endeavour to make them truly
brothers again. They have written against each
other with great bitterness, and have not exchanged
a word dui-ing the conferences. However, our
young lords are very gay, going about in sledges
with the ladies, with bells tinkling at their horses'
heads. God has heard our prayers ! I send you
some trout, a present from the countess Albert.
This lady is well pleased to see peace restored in
her family. . . . The rumour runs here that the
emperor is advancing towards Westphalia, and
that the French are enlisting landsknechts, as well
as the landgrave, &c. Let them talk, and invent
news, we will wait God's will. I recommend you to
his protection. — Martin Luther." (February 14th,
1546.)
Luther had arrived, the 28th January, at Eisle-
ben, and though already ill, he joined in all the
conferences until the 17th February. He preached
also four times, and revised the ecclesiastical sta-
tutes for the earldom of Mansfeld. The 17th, he
was so ill that the counts prayed him not to go out.
At supper he spoke much of his approaching end,
and some one asking him if he thought we should
recognize each other in the other world, he replied
that he thought so. On returning to his chamber
with master Cselius and his two sons, he drew near
the window, and remained there a long time in
prayer. After that, he said to Aurifaber, who had
just arrived, " I feel very weak, and my pains seem
to increase :" on which they administered some
medicine to him, and endeavoured to warm him by
friction. He spoke a few words to count Albert,
who had come to see him, aud then laid himself
down on the bed, saying, " If I could only sleep for
half an hour, I thiuk it would I'efresh me." He
did sleep without waking for an hour and a half.
This was about eleven o'clock. When he awoke,
he said to those in attendance, " What, still sitting
up by me: why do you not go to rest yourselves V
He then commenced praying, and said with fervoi',
" In mamis tuas commendo spiritum meitm ; redemisti
me, Domine, Deus xeritatis. (Into thy hands I com-
mend my spirit ; thou art my redeemer, O God
of truth.)" He also said to those about him, "All
of you pray, ray friends, for the Gospel of our Lord,
that his reign may be extended, for the council of
Trent and the pope threaten it greatly." He then
slept again for about an hour, and when he awoke,
doctor Jonas asking him how he felt, " O my God,"
he replied, " I feel myself very bad. I think, my
dear Jonas, that I shall remain here at Eisleben,
where I was boi'n." He then took a few steps
about the room, and laid himself down again on the
bed, where they covered him with soft cushions.
Two doctors, and the count with his wife then
arrived. Luther said to them, " I am dying ; I
shall remain at Eisleben." And doctor Jonas ex-
pressing a hope that the perspiration would perhaps
relieve him: " No, dear Jonas," replied he, "it is
a cold and dry sweat, and the pain is worse." He
then applied himself to prayer, and said, " O my
God ! Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, thou the
God of all consolation, I thank thee for having
revealed to me thy well-beloved Son, in whom I
believe ; whom I have preached and acknowledged;
whom I have loved and honoui'ed ; and whom the
pope and the ungodly persecute. I commend my
soul to thee, O my Saviour Jesus Christ ! I shall
leave this terrestrial body ; I shall be taken from
this life ; but I know that I shall rest eternally
with thee." He repeated three times following,
" In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum ; redemisti
me, Domine Teritatis." Suddenly his eyes closed
and he fainted. Count Albert and his wife, as well
as the doctors, used their utmost efforts to restore
him to life, in which they with difficulty succeeded.
Dr. Jonas then said to him, " Reverend father, do
you die in constant reliance on the faith you have
taught ?" He replied distinctly, " Fes," and fell
asleep again. Soon after he became alarmingly
pale, then cold, and drawing one deep breath, he
expired.
His body was borne to Wittemberg in a leaden
coffin, where he was buried the 22nd of February,
1546, with the highest honours. His mortal re-
mains lie in the church of the castle, at the foot of
the pulpit. (Ukert, i. p. 327, sqq. Extract from
the account drawn up hy Jonas and Ccelius.)
Will of Luther, dated January Gth, 1542. " I
the undersigned, Martin Luther, doctor, acknow-
ledge by these presents, to have given as jointure
to my dear and faithful wife Catherine, to enjoy
for the whole of her life as seems good to her,
the estate of Zeilsdorf, such as I bought it, and
have since made it ; the house Brun, which I
bought under the name of Wolf ; my goblets, and
other valuable things, such as rings, chains, medals
in gold and silver, to the value of about a thousand
florins. I have made this disposition, first, be-
cause she has ever been to me a pious and faithful
wife, who has tenderly loved me, and, by the
blessing of God, has given me and reared up five
children happily, still living. Secondly, that she
may take upon herself my debts, amounting to
about four hundred and fifty florins, supposing
that I do not discharge them before I die. Thirdly,
and above all, because I would not that she should
be dependent on her children, but rather that her
children should depend upon her, honour her, and
be subjected unto her, as God has commanded ;
for I have often seen children, even pious children,
excited by the devil to disobey this commandment,
especially when the mothers were widows, and the
sons had wives, the daughters husbands. Besides,
I thuik that the mother will be the best manager
of her children, and that she will not make use of
this settlement to the detriment of her own flesh
and blood, those whom she has carried at her
breast. Whatever may become of her after my
death (for I cannot limit the will of God), I have
this confidence in her, that she will always con-
duct herself as a good mother to her children, and
will share with them conscientiously whatever she
possesses. At the same time, I pray all my friends
G 2
84
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
A.D. 1546.
to be witnesses of the truth, and to defend my
dear Catherine, if it should liappen, as is possible,
that she should be accused by evil persons of
keeping money back for herself, and not sharing it
with her children. I certify that we have neither
ready money nor treasure of any kind. This need
surprise no one, when it is considered that we have
had no other income than my stipend and a few
presents, and that we have, nevertheless, gone to
the charge of building, and have borne the ex-
penses of a large household. I look on it also as a
particular mercy from God, which I thank him
for without ceasing, that we have had sufficient for
our wants, and that our debts are not greater. . . .
" I also pray my gracious master, duke John
Frederick, elector, to confirm and ratify this pre-
sent deed, although it may not be in the form
required by the lawyers. Martin Luther.
" Witnesses — Melanchthon,Cruziger, and Bu-
GENHAGEN."
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS*
Page 3, column I. "and there 1 mis born." — Cocli-
Iseus asserts that Luther was engendered by an
incubus. When he was a monk, adds this writer,
he was suspected of having dealings with the devil.
One day while the Gospel was being read, at the
part where it is said that Jesus forced a demon to
come out of the body of one deaf and dumb, Luther
fell on the ground, exclaiming, JVon sum, non sum
(It is not I, it is not 1). Some Spaniards who
were at the diet of Augsburg (a.d. 1530), seriously
believed that Luther and his wife were to give
birth to Antichrist. (Luth. Werke, t. i. p. 415.)
Julius-Cesar Vanini, Cerdan, and Francis Junc-
tinus, discovered in the constellations that had
accompanied the birth of Luther, that he was to
be an arch-heretic and an arch-villain ; Tycho-
Brahe and Nicholas Priicker, on the contrary,
declared he was born under a happy sign.
Page 3, col. 2. "Martin Luther." — Lotharius,
lut-her, leute-herr ? Chief of Men, Head of the
People ?
Page 4, col. 2. " Luther describes hotc these temp-
tations," &c. — " When I was young, it happened
that at Eisleben, on Corpus-Christi day, 1 was
walking with the procession, in my priest's robes,
when suddenly the sight of the holy sacrament,
which was carried by doctor Staupitz, so terrified
me, (thinking in my blindness that it was Jesus
Christ himself the vicar-general was carrying, that
Jesus Christ in person was there before me,) that
a cold sweat covered my body, and I believed my-
self dying of terror. The procession finished, I
confessed to doctor Staupitz, and related to him
what had happened to me. He replied : ' Your
thoughts are not of Christ ; Clirist never alarms ;
He comforts.' These words filled me with joy,
and were a great consolation to me." (Tischreden,
p. 133, verso.)
Doctor Martin Luther used to tell, that when he
was in the monastery at Erfurth, he said once to
doctor Staupitz : " Ah ! dear sir doctor, our Lord
God deals with us in a manner so terrible : who
can serve him, if he humbles us thus to the dust ?
To which he answered me, ' Young man, learn
* The "Life of Luther" has been given entire ; but with
regard to the somewhat heterogeneous "Additions," the
translator has exercised his discretion in condensing and
retrenching; scrupulously, however, retaining every passage
illustrative of the great Reformer's life and doctrines.
better how to judge God; if he did not act thus,
how could proud hearts be humbled ? Lofty trees
must be watched, least they reach the skies.' "
(Tischreden, p. 150, verso.)
Luther had great difficulty in bearing the ob-
ligations imposed on him by monastic life ; he tells
how, in the commencement of the Reformation, he
tried in vain to read his prayer-book regularly :
" Though I shall have done no more than deliver
men from this tyranny, they will owe me some
gratitude." (Tischi-eden, p. 160.) This constant
repetition, at fixed times, of the same meditations,
this materialism of prayer, which weighed so
much on the impatient spirit of Luther, Ignatius
Loyola, the contemporary of the German reformer,
laid the greatest stress upon, in his singular Re-
ligious Exercises.
At Erfurth, Luther read the greatest part of the
works left us by the ancient Romans, Cicero, Virgil,
Livy. ... At the age of twenty he was honoured with
the title of Master of Arts ; and at the desire of his
parents, he began the study of jurisprudence. . . .
At the convent of Erfurth he excited admiration
by his public exercises, and by the ease with which
he extricated himself from the meshes of logic. . .
He read with avidity the prophets and the apostles,
the books of Saint Augustin, his Explanation of the
Psalms, and his book On the Spirit and the Letter,
and learnt almost by heart the treatises of Gabriel
Biel and of Pierre d'Ailly, bishop of Cambray, and
was a diligent student of the writings of Occam,
whose logic he preferred to that of Thomas or
Scot. He was likewise a great reader of Gerson's
writings, and above all, of those of Saint Augustin."
(Life of Luther, by Melanchthon.)
Page 7, col. 1. " The Dominican, Tetzel, an im-
pudent mountebank.'''' — He preached, that if any one
had violated the holy virgin, his sin would be par-
doned by virtue of the indulgences; that the red
cross which he had set up in churches had as much
efficacy as that of Jesus Christ ; that he had saved
more souls by his indulgences than St. Peter by
his discourses ; and that the Saxons had only to
give money, and their mountains would become
muies of silver, &c. {Luther adv. Brunsvic, Sec-
kendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, 1. i. § 16, &c.)
By way of indirect concession, the Catholics gave
up Tetzel; and Miltitz relates, in a letter to Pfeffin-
ger (Seckendorf, 1. i. p. 62), that he can prove,
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
85
through an agent of the Fuggei-s, the great bankers
of Augsburg, that he (Tetzel) made free with the
money he received from the sale of indulgences.
" I will write the pope a full account," he says,
" and await his sentence."
Page 7) col. 1. "he was seized with indigtiation." —
" When I undertook to write against the gross
eri'or of indulgences, doctor Jerome Schurff stopped
me and said : ' Would you then write against the
pope ? What are you about ? It will not be al-
lowed.' 'What,' replied I; 'what, if they must
allow it ?' " (Tisehreden, 384, verso.)
Page 8, col. I. " the sermon in the vulgar tongue,
which Lutlier delitered." He states in a clear,
forcible manner, the doctrine of St. Thomas in the
five first paragraphs, and especially in the sixth,
which is very mystical. He then proceeds to show,
from Scripture, in opposition to this doctrine, that
the sinner's repentance and conversion can alone
secure him pardon for his sins. — (§ ix.) " Though
the church were to declare that indulgences efface
sins better than works of atonement, it would be
a thousand times better for a Christian not to buy
them, but rather to do the works and suffer the
penalties ; for indulgences are, and only can be,
dispensations from good works and salutary pains."
— (§ XV.) " It is better and safer to give towards
the building of St. Peter's, than to buy the indul-
gences sold for this end. You ought, above all, to
give to your poor neighbour ; and if there should be
none in your town who need your assistance, you
ought to give towards your own churches. . . . My
counsel to all is. Buy not these indulgences ; leave
them to be purchased by bad Christians. Let
each follow his own path. . . ." — (§ xviii.) " I
know nothing about souls being drawn out of pur-
gatory by the efficacy of indulgences ; I don't
believe they can. The safer way is to have recourse
to prayer. . . . Leave the schoolmen to be school-
men. All put together, they cannot stamp a doc-
trine with authority."
These would seem to be rather notes, to serve as
heads of a discourse, than the sermon itself. (Lu-
ther, Werke, vii. p. 1.)
Page 8, col. 2. "It is said that Leo X. believed
ths whole to be a ^natter of professional jealousy." —
" The pope was formerly extremely proud, and de-
spised every one. The cardinal-legate Caietano
said to me at Augsburg, ' What ? do yon think
that the pope cares about Germany ? The pope's
little finger is more powerful than all your princes.'
When my first propositions upon indulgences were
presented to the pope, ' This is a drunken Ger-
man's doing,' he said, ' leave him to get sober,
and he will talk differently.' It was in this jeering
tone that he spoke of every one."
Luther did not leave all the contempt to the
Italians, but returned it to them with interest.
" If this Sylvester continues to provoke me by these
fooleries, I will put an end to the game, and, giving
the reins to my mind and my pen, I will show him
that there are men in Germany who can see through
his tricks, and those of Rome ; and God grant
the time was come. The juggling Italians, with
their evasions and their subterfuges, have too long
amused themselves at our expense, as if we were
fools and buffoons." (September 1st, 1518.)
" I am delighted that Philip (Melanchthon) has
proved for himself the Italian chai'acter. These phi-
losophers will believe nothing without experience.
For my part, there is not one Italian I would trust
any longer, not even the emperor's confessor. My
dear Caietano loved me with so true a friendship,
that he would have shed for me every drop of blood
in . . . my own veins. They are queer fellows.
The Italian, if good, is really good; but is a prodigy,
a black swan." (July 21st, 1530.)
" I want Sadolet to believe that God is the Father
of all men, even out of Italy ; but this is beyond
an Italian's mind." (October 14th, 1539.) "The
Italians," says Hutten, "who accused us of being
unable to produce any work of genius, are now
forced to admire our Albert Durer; and so strong is
this admii'ation, that they even put his name on their
own works in order to sell them." (Hutten, ill. 76.)
Page 9, col. 1. "Either out of regard for his new
ttnirersity." — The university of Wittemberg wrote
to the elector, praying that he would extend his
protection to the most illustrious of her members
(p. 55, Seckendorf ). Luther's increasing celebrity
attracted an immense concourse of students to
Wittemberg. Luther himself says, " Studium nos-
trum more formicarum fervet " (Our study is as
busy as an ant's nest). A writer, almost contem-
porary with him, says, " I have heard my tutors
say that students flocked to Wittemberg from all
countries to hear Luther and Melanchthon ; and
that, as soon as they descried the city fi-om a dis-
tance, they used to return thanks to God with up-
lifted hands, for that from Wittemberg, as formerly
from Jerusalem, there came out the light of Gospel
truth, to be spread unto the furthest corners of the
earth." (Scultetus in Annalibus, anno 1517, P- 16j
17 ; quoted by Seckendorf, p. 59.)
From a letter of Luther's, bearing date Nov. 1st,
1524, the elector would appear to have been but
parsimonious towards his favourite university.
" I beg you," he writes, " dear Spalatin, to ask the
prince whether he means to allow this academy to
crumble away and perish ?"
Page 9, col. 1 . " this prince had always taken him
under his special protettion." The elector himself
writes to Spalatin : " Our Martin's affair goes on
well ; Pfeffinger is full of hope." (Seckendorf, p. 53.)
Page 9, col. 1 . " that Holy Scripture speaks with
such majesty." — Schenk had been charged to buy
relics for the church of Wittemberg; but, in 1520,
the commission was recalled, and the relics were sent
back to Italy, to be sold at any price they could
fetch. " For here," writes Spalatin, " the lowest
orders despise them, in the firm and true persua-
sion, that it suffices to learn from Holy Scripture
to have faith and confidence in God, and to love
one's neighbour." (Maccrfe, p. 37, fi'om Schlegel's
Life of Spalatin, p. 59. Seckendorf, i. p. 223.)
Page 10, col. 1. " Caietano de Vio, the legate, ^cas
certainly a judge not much to be feared." — Extract
from an account of the conferences between car-
dinal Caietano and Luther: — Luther having de-
clared that the pope had no power but salra
Scriptura, the cardinal laughed at his words, and
said to him, "Dost thou not know that the pope is
above councils ? has he not I'ecently condemned
and punished the council of Bale ?" Luther. " But
the Paris university has appealed from him."
The Cardinal. "And Paris shall be equally pun-
ished." Again, Luther having quoted Gerson, the
cardinal answered him, " What are the Gersonites
8G
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
to me ?" Upon which Luther asked him, in re-
turn, " And who then are the Gersonites V " Oh,
let us quit this subject," said the cai'dinal, and
began to talk of other things. The cardinal sent
Luther's answers to the pope, by an extraordinary
express. He also sent word to Luther, by doctor
Wenceslaus, that, provided he was willing to re-
voke what he had advanced on the subject of in-
dulgences, all might be arranged. " For," added
he " the article on the faith necessary for the
Holy Sacrament may very well bear a twist into
a different sense."
Luther said, on his return from Augsburg, " that
if he had four hundred heads, lie would rather
lose them all, than revoke his article on faith."
" No man in Germany,'' says Hutten, " despises
death more than Luther."
He offered Caietano to submit his opinions to
the judgment of the three universities of Bale, of
Friburg (in Brisgau), and of Louvain, and, if re-
quired, to that of the university of Paris, "es-
teemed of all time the most Christian and most
learned."
In a letter of Luther's to the elector of Saxony
(Nov. I9th, 1518), he expressly rebuts Caietano's
charge, that his attack on indulgences had been
instigated by the elector, and states that none
among his dearest friends were privy to his design,
" save my lords the archbishop of Magdeburg, and
the bishop of Brandenburg.
Page 11, col. 2. "required an inquiry into the
tnatter by disinterested judges." — The legates, never-
theless, confined their demands to requiring that
Luther's works should be burnt. " The pope,"
they said, " will not soil his hands with the blood of
Luther." (Luther, Opera, ii.)
Page 11. col. 2. last line. " Miltitz changed his
tone." — In 1520, Luther's opponents were divided
into two parties, represented by Eck and Miltitz.
Eck, having held a public disputation against
Luther, conceived that his repute as a theologian
would be compromised unless he could either re-
duce him to retract, or procui'e his foi-mal condem-
nation from the pope, and therefore he resorted to
violent measures ; whilst Miltitz, on the contrary,
as the direct agent of the Holy See, sought only to
hush up matters, admitting everything that Luther
advanced, spoke as freely as himself of the pope-
dom, and only required him to promise silence.
On the 20th of October, 1520, he writes to the
elector to suggest the feasibility of the latter's
sending two or three golden pieces, bearing his
effigy, and as many silver ones, to the young car-
dinals, the pope's relatives, in order to pi'opitiate
them, and begs for himself as well. He had
written on the 14th, to say, that Luther had pro-
mised to be silent, on condition that his adversaries
would be silent too ; and assures the elector that
he will baulk Eck and his faction.
Miltitz seems to have been a boon companion.
He writes to the elector, that spending his even-
ing joyously at Stolpa, with the bishop of Misnia,
a pamphlet of Luther's was brought in, in which
the official of Stolpa was attacked ; and that while
the bishop fumed, and the official swore, he and
duke Geoi'ge did nothing but laugh, (a.d. 1520.
Seckendorf, 1. i. p. 98.) He and Luther passed some
time together, making good cheer at Lichtenberg.
(Ibid. p. 99.)
Miltitz met with a fitting end ; having tumbled
into the Rhine, near Mentz, after copious libations,
and being drowned. He had five hundred gold
pieces about him. (Id. ibid. p. 117.)
Page 12, col. 1. "owned that he had got the whole
icorld with him away from the pope." — Luther's
works were already highly popular. John Froben,
the celebrated printer of Bale, wrote to him, on the
14th of February, 1519, that his books were read
and approved, even at Paris, and even in the Sor-
bonne ; that he had not a single copy left of all
those he had reprinted, and that they were dis-
persed over Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, and every
where approved by the doctors, (Seckendorf,
1. i. p. 68.)
Page 12, col. 1. "not content with repairing to
Leipsic, to plead in his own defence." — Luther's
journey to Leipsic : " First there was Carlstadt,
alone in a chariot, preceding all the others; but a
wheel coming off near to the church of Saint Paul,
he fell, and this fall was considered a bad omen for
him. Next came the chariot of Barnim, prince of
Pomerania, who was then studying at Wittemberg,
and bore the title of honorary rector. By his side
were Luther and Melanchthon. A gi'eat number
of armed scholars fi'om Wittemberg accompanied
the carriage." (June 19th, 1519.) (Seckendorf,
1. i. p. 92.)
Page 12, col. 1. "with the authority of the prince,
his protector." — Luther needed not any longer doubt
the protection of the elector, when Spalatin, that
prince's confidential adviser, translated and pub-
lished in Germany his book, entitled Consolation to
M Christians." (February, 1520.)
Page 12, col. 1. "to issue a solemn summons . . ,
to a disputation." At this period Luther, still some-
what unsettled in his ideas of reform, sought to
clear up his doubts by argument, and demanded and
prayed for public conferences. On the 15th January,
1520, he writes to the emperor: " It will now soon
be three years since I have had to endure anger
without end and outrageous wrongs, since I have
been exposed to a thousand perils, and a prey to
all the calumnies my enemies could devise against
me. In vain have I asked pardon for what I have
said; in vain have I offered to keep silence; in vain
have I proposed conditions of peace; in vain have I
entreated to be enlightened, if in error. Not a
word has been listened to : one only object has
been kept in view — my ruin and that of the Gos-
pel. Since I have, up to this present moment,
tried everything in vain, I will, after the example
of Saint Athanasius, invoke the imperial majesty.
I humbly, then, implore your majesty, Charles,
prince of the kings of the earth, to take pity, not on
me, but on the cause of truth, for which alone it
has been given you to bear the sword. Let me be
allowed to prove my doctrine. Either I shall con-
quer or I shall be conquered; and if I am found
impious or heretical, I ask neither protection nor
mercy." (Opera Latina Lutheri, Wittem. ii. 42.)
Page 12, col. 2, near the end. " When the hull of
condemnation reached Germany." — The universities
of Louvain and Cologne approved the pope's bull,
and, consequently, drew down the attacks of
Luther. He accused them of having unjustly con-
demned Occam, Pico de la Mirandola, Laurentius
Valla, John Reuchliu. And to weaien (says
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
87
Cochlseus) the authority of these universities, he
attaclied them unceasingly in his books, putting in
the margin, whenever he met with a barbarism, or
anyiliing badly written, as they say at Louva'm, as
they say at Cologne, * Lotanialiter, Colonialiter,' &c.
(Cochlteus, p. 22.) At Cologne and Mentz, and in all
the hereditary states of Charles V., Luther's works
were burnt from the year 1520. (Cochleeus, p. 25.)
Page 13, col. 1. " not one of them has said it more
eloquently than he himself." — He wrote on the 29th
Novembei", 1521, to the Austin fi-iars of Wittem-
berg: " I daily feel how difficult it is to divest one-
self of scruples long entertained. Oh: the pain
it has cost me, though with the Scriptures before
me, to justify myself to myself, for daring singly to
set myself up against the pope and hold him as
Antichrist! What tribulations have I not suffered!
How often have I not addressed to myself iu
bittei'ness of spii'it the argument of the papists,
' Art thou alone wise ? are all others in error 2 can
they have been so many years deceived ? What
if thou deceivest thyself, and di-aggest along with
thee in thy error so many souls to everlasting
damnation ? ' Thus I used to argue within myself
until Jesus Christ with his own, his infallible word,
fortified me, and strengthened my soul against
such arguments, as a rock raised above the waves,
laughs their fury to scorn.". . .(Luth. Briefe, t. ii.
p. 107.)
P. 14, col. 1. "He took his stand at this time on
St. John." — " It is necessary to take the Gospel of
St. John in a very different point of view from the
other evangelists. The idea of this evangelist is,
that man can do nothing, has nothing of himself;
that he owes every thing to the Divine mercy. . . .
I repeat, and I will repeat, whoever would raise
his thoughts to a salutary consideration of the
Almighty, ought to make every thing subordinate
to the humanity of Christ; ought to keep it ever
before him, both in his life and in his Passion, till
his heart is softened. Then, let him not rest there,
but let him develope and extend the thought still
further. It is not of his own will, but of the will
of God the Father, that Jesus did and suffered this
or that. It is then that he will begin to taste the
infinite sweetness of the will of the Father revealed
in the humanity of Christ."
Page 14, col. 2. "his smallest pamphlets were
emulously caught upP — The celebrated painter, Lu-
cas Cranach, made designs for Luther's smaller
works. — (Seckeudorf, p. 148.)
Page 14, col. 2. " if any printer more conscientious
than the rest." — The same at Augsburg. The con-
fession of Augsburg was printed and spread all
over Germany before even the end of the diet;
the refutation of the catholics, which the emperor
had ordered to be printed, was sent to the printers,
but never appeared. Luther, ridiculing the
catholics for not daring to publish this refutation,
calls it a nightbird, an owl, a bat (jioctua et vesper-
«iiJo.)— (Cochlajus,p. 202.)
Page 14, col. 2. " it was to the nobles that Luther
had chiefly appealed." — " To his imperial majesty
and to the Christian nobles of the German nation
— Di\ Martin Luther (a.d. 1520).
" To the grace and glory of our Lord Jesus. . . .
TheRomanists have cleverly surrounded themselves
with thi-ee walls, by means of which they have up
to this time shut out the Reformation, to the great
prejudice of Christianity. First, they pretend
that spiritual power is above temporal power;
next, that it belongs to the pope alone to interpret
the Bible; and thirdly, that the pope only has the
right to call a council.
" May it please God to come to our aid here,
and to give us those trumpets which formerly
overthrew the walls of Jericho, that we may
blow down these walls of paper and rubbish, bring
to light the artifices and lies of the devil, and win
back, by repentance and amendment, the grace of
God. Let us begin with the first wall.
"First Wall. . . . All Christians are spiritually
of the same condition, and there is no difference
between them, but that which results from their
different functions, according to the words of the
Apostle (1 Cor.xii.),who says that we 'be many mem-
bers, yet but one body;' but that each member has an
office peculiar to itself, by which it is useful to others.
We have all the same baptism, the same Gospel,
the same faith, and as Christians we are all equal.
... It is with the priest as with the bailli, whilst
in office he is above the rest; but when he has laid
it down, he becomes that which he was — a mere
citizen. Indelible characters are but a chimera. . . ,
The secular power being instituted of God, in
order that the wicked may be punished, the good
protected, its ministry ought to extend to all
Christians, without consideration of person, pope,
bishop, monk, nun, or others, it matters not. . . .
Has a priest been killed, all the country is laid
under interdict. Why is it not so when a peasant
has been murdered 1 Whence this difference
between Christians whom Jesus Christ calls equal?
Simply fi'om the laws and inventions of men. . . .
" Second Wall. . . We are priests — does not the
apostle say it (1 Cor. ii.) : 'He that is spiritual
judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no
man ?' We have all, by faith, the same Spirit, says
also the apostle; wherefore should we not be sensible
as well as popes, who are often infidels, of what is
conformable to the faith, what contrary to it ?
" Third Wall. . . . The first councils were not
convened by the popes ; the council of Nice, itself,
was convoked by the emperor Constantine. ... If
enemies surprised a town, the honour would be to
him who should first cry ' to arms,' let him be
burgomaster or not. Why should it not be the
same for him who stands sentinel against our
enemies, the powers of darkness, and who, seeing
them advance, should be first to assemble the
band of Christians against them ? Must he be
pope to do this ? . . . "
The following is the summary of the reforma-
tions proposed by Luther : — That the pope shall
reti'ench the luxury of his court, and approximate
more to the poverty of Christ. His court absorbs
immense sums; it is calculated that more than three
hundred thousand florins leave Germany every year
for Rome. Twelve cardinals would be sufficient,
and they should be maintained by the pope. Why
do the Germans allow themselves to be despoiled
by the cardinals, who seize all their rich founda-
tions, and spend the revenues at Rome 1 The
French do not suffer this. That no more contri-
butions be levied to be employed against the
Turks ; which is but a lure, a miserable pretext
for getting our money. That the pope's right of
investiture be no longer acknowledged. Rome
88
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
draws all to itself by the most impudent practices. ]
There is in this city a simple courtier, who is
possessed of twenty-two curacies, seven priories,
forty-four prebends, &c. That the secular authori-
ties send no more annats to Rome — as has been
the custom for a century past. That it suffice for
the installation of bishops, that they be confirmed
by the two nearest bishops, or by their archbishop,
conformably to the council of Nice. " In proposing
these changes, my object is to induce reflection in
such as are disposed to aid Germany in becoming
Christian, and to free herself from the deplorable
government of the pope, a government which is
Antichristian."
That thei-e be fewer pilgrimages to Italy. The
orders of mendicants to be allowed to die away ;
they are degenerated, and do not fulfil the inten-
tion of their founders. The marriage of priests to
be permitted. Many of the holidays to be sup-
pressed, or made to fall on Sundays. Fetes of
patrons, so prejudicial to morals, to be abolished.
Fasts to be suppressed. " Many things, formerly
useful, are not so now." Begging to be put down.
Each community to be held responsible for the
care of its poor. The founding of private masses
to be forbidden. Further inquiry to be made into
the doctrine of the Bohemians, and to join
them in resisting the court of Rome. The De-
cretals to be abolished. Houses of ill-fame to be
suppressed.
" I know yet another song to sing to the court of
Rome and the Romanists ; and if their ears itch
for it, they shall have it, and to the last stave
(highest octave 1). You understand, Rome ? (Lu-
ther, Werke, vi. 544—50-8.)
Page 15, col. 1. " I would not have violence and
murder employed in the cause of the Gospel." — He
wished Germany to separate itself peaceably from
the holy see : it was with this view that he wrote
in 1520 to Charles V. and to the German nobles,
to induce them to renounce obedience to Rome.
" The emperor," said he, " has equal power over
the clergy and over the laity ; the difference
between these two classes is but fictitious, since by
baptism we all become priests." (Lutheri Opera,
ii. p. 20.)
Nevertheless, if one can believe the authority,
suspicious enough we must allow, of Cochlteus, he
was at this very time preaching war against Rome.
Cochlseus makes him say, " If we have gibbets for
thieves, axes for brigands, fires for heretics, where-
fore not arms against these masters of sedition,
these cardinals, these popes, against all this slime
of the Roman Sodom, which is corrupting the
Church of Christ ? Why not wash our hands in
their blood V 1 am not aware from what work of
Luther's Cochlseus takes these words. (Cochlseus,
p. 22.)
Page 15, col. 1. " Ilutten , . . in order to strike
a league between them and the nobles of the Rhine." —
From the opening of the diet inquiries were made
of Spalatin, as to the course the elector would pur-
sue in case of war; there was reason to believe
that he would support his theologian, the glory of
his university. " Who does not know," writes
Luther to him, " that prince Frederick has become
an example to princes for his patronage of lite-
rature?" your Wittemberg Hebraizes and Hellenises
successfully ; there Minerva governs the arts ;
there the true theology of Christ triumphs." He
writes to Spalatin (October 3rd, 1620): " Many
think that I ought to ask our good prince to obtain
for me an edict from the emperor forbidding any
sentence against me, unless I am convicted of error
out of Scriptui'e: consider whether this be advis-
able." It appears by what follows that Luther
thought he could count on the sympathy of the
Italians. " Instead of books, I would rather living
books could be multiplied, that is to say, preachers.
I send you what has been written to me from Italy
on this subject." " If our prince were so inclined,
I do not believe that he could undertake any work
worthier of him; were the commonalty of Italy to
join us our cause would be mightily strengthened:
who knows ? God perhaps will raise them up. He
preserves our prince to us in order to make him the
medimn of spreading the divine word. Consider
then what you can do in this quarter, for the cause
of Christ." Luther had not neglected to win the
affection of the towns. We find him at the close of
the year 1520, soliciting the elector to lower the
taxes imposed on the town of Kemberg. " The
people," he writes, " are drained even to misery by
this detestable usury. . . . Fat livings are made
fattei', religious ceremonies kept up, and even some
fraternities enriched by this usury, rather by this
sacrilegious taxation, this impious theft."
Page 15, col. 1. Buntsclmh (shoe of alliance). — The
sabot already served as a distinctive sign in the
twelfth century. Sahatati was a name of the
Vaudois. (See Dufresne, Glossar. at the word
Sabatati.)
Page 16, col. 1 . "All this greatly added to my con-
sideration."— Spalatin relates in his annals (p. 50)
that the second day Luther appeared, the elector of
Saxony on returning from the town-hall, sent for
Spalatin to his chamber, and expressed to him the
surprise he felt; " Doctor Martin has spoken nobly
before the emperor, and to the princes and states
of the empire, only he was a little too bold." (Mar-
heinecke. History of the Reformation, i. 264.)
Page 18, col. 1. "In the last conference the Arch-
bishop of Treves, ^c. — Luther ended this conference
by saying, " In all that concerns the word of God
and faith, every Christian can judge as well for
himself as the pope; each must live and die accord-
ing to his faith. The word of God is the peculiar
property of each individual of the community; and
each member must interpret it for himself. I cited
in confirmation of this," continues Luther, " the pas-
sage of St. Paul, 1st Corinthians xiv., where he
sa,ys,' If anything be revealed to another that is sitting
by, let the first hold his peace.'' This text clearly
proves that the master should follow his disciple, if
the latter understand God's word better. They
could not refute this testimony, and we broke up."
(Luth. Werke, ix. p. 117-)
Page 19, col. 2, near the end. " Luther found
few books at Wartburg. — He set ardently about the
study of Greek and Hebrew." It was here he began
his ti'anslation of the Bible. Several versions in
German had been already published at Nuremberg,
in 1477, 1483, 1490, and at Augsburg, in 1518 ;
but none of them were made for the people, being
forbidden to be read, and also infamously printed."
(Nee legi permittebantur, nee ob styli typorum
horriditatem satisfacere poterant.) Seckendorf,
lib. i. 204.
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
89
Before the end of the fifteenth century, Germany
possessed at least twelve editions of the Bible
in the vulgar tongue, while Italy had but two,
and France only one. {Jung, Hist, de la Refonne, a
Strasburg.)
The adversaries of the Reformation themselves
contributed to increase the number of Bibles in the
vulgar tongue. Thus, Jex'ome Emser published a
translation of the Scriptures to oppose that of Lu-
ther. (Cochlseus, 50.) Luther's did not appear
complete until 1534.
Canstein's printing-office at Halle alone printed,
in the space of a century, two millions of Bibles,
one million of New Testaments, and as many
Psalters. (Ukert, t. ii. p. 339.)
" I was twenty years of age," says Luther him-
self, " before I had ever seen the Bible. I believed
that no other Gospels or Epistles existed than those
in the sermon books. At last, I found a Bible in the
library of Erfurth, and I often read out of it to
Staupitz with great wonder." (Tischreden, p. 253.)
Under the papacy, the Bible was all but un-
known. Carlstadt began to read it after he had
taken his doctor's degree eight years. (Tischreden,
p. 6, verso.)
At the diet of Augsburg (a.d. 1530), as the bishop
of Mentz was looking over the Bible one day, one of
his counsellors happened to come in, who said to
him, " Gracious lord, what does your electoral
grace make of this book V To which he replied,
" I know not what to make of it, save that all I find
in it is against us." " Doctor Usingen, an Augus-
tin monk, who was my preceptor at the convent
of Erfurth, used to say to me when he saw me
reading the Bible with such devotion, ' Ah ! brother
Martin, what is there in the Bible ? It is better to
read the ancient doctors, who have sucked the
honey of the truth. The Bible is the cause of all
troubles.'" (Tisch., p. 7-)
Selneccer, a contemporary of Luther's, relates
that the monks would murmur at seeing Luther
read the Holy Scriptures so assiduously, and tell
hira it was not in study of that kind, but by begging
and collecting bi'ead, meat, fish, eggs, and money,
that he could be of any service to the community.
.... His noviciate was extremely hard ; inside
the monastery, the lowest and most laborious offices
were given to him ; and outside, the begging with
the sack. (Almanach des Protestants pour Nov.
1810, p. 43.)
Luther states that, when he was first a student,
" the pagan Aristotle was held in such honour,
that whoever had disputed his authority, would
have been condemned at Cologne as a rank here-
tic;" but that he was so little understood, that a
monk, preaching on the Passion, favoured his
hearers with a two hours' discussion of the question,
' Whether quality were really distinct from substance,'
stating, as an instance, ' / could pass my head
through that hole, but not the size of my head.' " (Tisch-
red., p. 15, verso.)
" My brothers of the convent would say to me
when I was studying, ' Sic tibi, sic mihi, saccum
per nackum,' (Come, we are all alike here, put the
bag round your neck.) (Tischred. p. 272.)
Page 19, col. 2, last line. "He translated into
German Melanchthon^s Ap:logy." — He says, " Tuara
in asinos Parisienses apologiam cum illorum insania
statui vernacule dare adjectis annotatiouibus." (I
am going to translate into Gennan, with notes of
my own, your Apology to the Paris asses, and to
prove their insanity.)
Page 22, col. 2. " This reason was, the alarming
character assumed by the Reformation." — Before
quitting his retreat, he often tried by letters to
prevent his followers from going too far. To the
inhabitants of Wittemberg. ..." You attack
masses, images, and other trifles, while you over-
look faith and charity, of which you have so much
need. You have, by your scandals, afflicted many
pious souls, perhaps better than youi-selves. You
have forgotten what was due to the weak. If the
strong run as fast as they are able, must not the
weak, left behind, faint by the way \
" God has granted you great grace, has given
you the word in all its purity. Nevertheless, I
see not a grain of charity in you ; you do not even
bear with those who have never heard the word.
You have no care for our brothers and sisters of
Leipsic, and of Meissen, and of so many other
countries, whom we ought to save with ourselves.
. . . You have thrown yourselves headlong into
this business, neither looking to the right nor
to the left. Do not count therefore upon me ;
I shall deny you. You have begun without me,
you must end the same. . . " (December, 1521.)
Page 24, col. 1. "the confusion that had arisen
in his flock." — On his return to Wittemberg, he
preached eight days running. These sermons
effectually restored order in the town.
Page 24, col. 1. " / myself no longer know Lu-
ther."— " A charitable exhortation of doctor Martin
Luther to all Christians, to keep them from the
spirit of revolt and disturbance." (a.d. 1524.)
" In the first place, I pray you to leave my
name alone, and not to call yourselves Lutherans,
but Christians. Who is Luther ? My doctx-ine is
not mine ! I have not been ci'ucified for any one.
St. Paul (1 Corinthians iii.) would not that any one
should call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of
Christ. How then does it befit me, a miserable
bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the
children of Christ ? Cease, my dear friends, to
cling to these party names and distinctions; away
with them all ; and let us call ourselves only
Christians, after him from whom our doctrine
comes.
" It is quite just that the papists should bear
the name of their party ; because they are not
content with the name and doctrine of Jesus
Christ, they will be papists besides. Well, let
them own the pope, as he is their master. For
me, I neither am nor wish to be master of any
one. I and mine will contend for the sole and
whole doctrine of Christ, who is our sole Master."
(Luth. Werke, ii. p. 4.)
Page 24, col. 2. " Never had any private man,
before him, addressed a monarch. . . " — At this very
time he was exceeding all bounds in his attacks on
the holy see. In his reply to pope Adrian's briefs,
he says, " I grieve to be obliged to write such good
German in reply to this pitiful kitchen Latin. But
God wills to confound Antichrist in all things. . . .
It is a disgrace to off'er reasonable beings so stupid
and absurd an interpretation of Scripture."
" I would make one bundle of pope and cardinals,
and fling the whole into our little ditch of the
90
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
Tuscan Sea. Such a bath, I pledge my word, and
back it with Jesus Christ as security, would cure
them."
" My little Paul, my little pope, my little don-
key, trot gently; it is slippery, you will break a
leg, you will injure yourself, and folk will cry out,
' What the devil's this ? How our little popeling
is injured !'" (a. d. 1542? Bossuet's translation in
his Variations, i. 45, 46.)
Interpretation of the Monachomtulus (monk-calf)
and of two horrible popeling monsters found in the
Tiber, at Home, in the year 1496 ; published at
Friburg, in Misnia, in 1523, by Philip Melanchthon
and MaHin Luther. — " In all times God has mani-
fested by evident signs his wrath or his mercy.
Even so his prophet Daniel foretold the coming of
Antichrist, in order that the faithful, being warned,
might be on their guard against his blasphemies
and idolatry.
" During this reign of tyranny, God has given
many signs, and, lately, the horrible popeling mon-
ster, found dead in the Tiber in the year 1496. . . .
First, the ass's head signifieth the pope ; for the
Church is a spiritual body, which neither ought,
nor can have any visible head. Christ alone is
lord and head of the Church. The pope has sought,
in opposition to God, to make himself the visible
head of the Church ; therefore this ass's head,
attached to a human body, can signify none but he.
Indeed, an ass's head fits the human body better
than the pope the Church ! As great as is the
difference between an ass's brain and human
intellect and reason, so great is the difference
between the papal doctrine and the doctrine of
Christ
" He has not only an ass's head as regards
Scripture, but as regards natural law and human
judgment. The jurists of the empire say that
a true canonist is a true ass.
" The monster's right hand, like to an elephant's
foot, signifieth that he crushes the timid and fear-
ful. And so he crushes and bruises souls by his
decrees, which, without cause or reason, terrify
consciences with a thousand sins of his invention,
and the names of which even are not understood.
" The left hand signifieth the pope's temporal
power ; who, in opposition to Christ's word, has
become the lord of kings and princes. Not one of
them has excited or entered into so many wars ;
not one has shed so much blood. Busied with
worldly matters, he neglects the preaching of the
word, and deserts the Church.
" The right foot, like to an ox's hoof, signifieth
the ministers of spii-itual authority, who support
and defend this tyrannical power to the oppression
of souls ; to wit, pontifical doctors, confessors, the
swarms of monks and nuns, and, above all, the
school divines, — all of whom go on extending the
pope's intolerable laws, and so holding consciences
prisoners under the elephant's foot.
" The left foot, which ends in a griffin's claws,
signifieth the ministers of the civil power. Just
as the griffin's claws do not readily let go what
they have once seized, so the pope's satellites
have seized by the books of tlie canons the goods
of all Europe, and retain them so stubbornly that
one cannot force them back.
" The belly and the woman's breast signify the
pope's body, that is, the cai'dinals, bishops, priests,
monks, all the sacro-saint martyrs, all the pam-
pered hogs of Epicurus's sty, who think only
of eating, drinking, and voluptuous pleasures of
every kind, and all this, not only freely, but with a
reserve of peculiar privileges. . . .
" Their eyes full of adultery, their hearts of
avarice, these sons of perdition have abandoned
the right road to follow Balaam, seeking the
reward of his iniquity."
Page 25, col. 1. "they hate not had the courage
to face Luther alone." — According to Luther's own
confession, this violent answer scandalized num-
bers of his own party. King Christiern got him
to write a letter of apology to Henry VIII.,
assuring him that that monarch was about to
introduce the Reformation into England, in which
he states, by way of excuse, that he had been
informed that the work was not his, and offers " to
sing a palinode" ( palinodiam cantare). Sept. 1st,
1525. His letter had no effect on the irritated
Henry ; so, some months after, he breaks out
with, " These womanly-hearted tyrants have but
an impotent and sordid mind But, by God's
grace, I am sufficiently avenged by the contempt I
feel for them, and for Satan, their God." (Dec.
1525.)
Page 26, col. 1. "Attempts at organization." —
When Luther felt the necessity of inti-oducing
some order and regularity into the new Church,
finding himself called upon every day to judge
mati-imonial causes, and to decide on all the rela-
tions between the church and the laity, he set
himself to study the canon laws.
" In this matter of marriage which has been
submitted to me, I have decided according to the
decrees of the popes. I have begun to read the
regulations of the papists, and I find that they do
not by any means follow them," (March 30th,
1529.)
" I would give my left hand for the papists to be
obliged to observe their own canons. They would
cry out more loudly against them than against
Luther."
" The Decretals are like the monster; the head,
a woman's; the body, that of a devouring Uon; the
tail, a serpent's; nothing but falsehoods and de-
ceit. Behold the image of the popedom." — (Tisch-
reden, p. 277? folio et verso.)
Page 26, col. i. " The ansicers he returns to the
multitude that come to consult him." — (October 11th,
1533.) To the community of Esslingen : — " It is
true, that I have said confession is good; in the
same way that I forbid no one to fast,.to keep holy
days, to go on pilgrimages, &c. But I wish all
these things to be done freely, and at every per-
son's choice; not as if it was a mortal sin to omit
them. . . . 13ut, as there are many consciences
captive to the laws of the pope, you will do well
not to eat meat in the presence of those men still
weak in the faith. This abstinence on your part
becomes a work of charity; in that it spares the
conscience of your neighbour. . . ."
(October 16th, 1523.) To Michael Vander Stras-
sen, tax-gatherer, at Borna (concerning a preacher
of Oelsnitz, who exaggerated Luther's principles):
— " You have seen what my opinion is by my book
On Confession and on Mass, where I show that con-
fession is good when a matter of choice, and that the
mass, though neither a sacrifice nor a good work,
is yet a testimony of religion, &c. Your preacher's
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
91
fault is that he flies too high, and throws away his
old shoes before he has new ones. He should begin
by instructing the people in faith and charity. In
a year or so, when they shall thoroughly under-
stand Jesus Christ, it will be time to approach the
points that he is now mooting. ... I preached
three years at Wittemberg before coming to these
questions, and men of this stamp wish to do all in
an hour. These hasty spirits work much harm. . .
Let hira refrain from prohibiting and punishing
confession. . . ."
Page 27, col. 1. "As to mass." — " Please God, I
will try to do away with these masses. I can no
longer bear the tricks and plots of these three
demi-canons against the unity of our Church."
(November 27th, 1524.)
" I have at last stirred up our canons to consent
to the abrogation of masses." (December 2nd,
1544.)
" These two words, ' mass and sacrament,' are
as far from each other as light and darkness, as
heaven and hell, as God and devil, . . ."
" Questions were frequently put to him with
regard to the baptism of children before delivery: —
" I have often hindered our midwives from bap-
tizing children before they were brought into the
world. They used to baptize the foetus as soon as
the head appeared. Why not baptize over the
mother's belly, or, better still, baptize the belly
itself r' (March 13th, 1531.)
Page 27, col. 2. " De Mlnistrh Ecdesiw Institu-
endis" (Instructions to the Ministers of Wittem-
berg):— " To dismiss unworthy ministers; to abro-
gate all masses and pui'chased vigils; in the
morning, instead of mass, Te Deum, lecture and
exhortation ; in the evening, lecture and exposition ;
complines after supper. One mass only to be said
on Sundays and holydays." — (Briefe, August 19th,
1523.)
In 1520, he published a catechism; and ten
years afterwards, another; in which he only kept
baptism and the communion, and did away entirely
with confession; at the same time exhorting to a
frequent recurrence to the pastor's advice.
He wished to preserve tithes in order to render
ministers independent of the civil power. " Tithes
seem to me the justest thing in the world. Would
to God that all taxes were abolished, save tithes, or
ninths, or eighths; what do I say ? The Egyptians
gave the fifth, and yet could live !" (June 15th,
1524.)
Page 27, col. 2. " that tlie priest is invested inth
an indestructible character." — " Pastors and preach-
ers who give cause for scandal, ought to be sus-
pended and imprisoned; and the elector has resolved
to erect a prison for this purpose.". . . . "The
doctor then alluded to John Sturm, whom he had
often visited in the castle of Wittemberg, and who,
persisting in holding the opinion that Christ had
only died for the example's sake, was imprisoned
in the tower of Sehwrinitz, where he died." —
(Tischred. p. 190.)
" Luther said that the Anabaptists were to be
punished only inasmuch as they were seditious." —
(Tischred. p. 298.)
Page 28, col. I . "he yet exercised a sort of supre-
macy and controul." — He decides that canons are
obliged to share the public charges with the citi-
zens. {Letter to the Council of Stettin, January I2th,
1523). Applications were often made to him for
church livings :
" Put your mind at rest about having a parish.
There is everywhere a great dearth of faithful
pastors ; so much so, that we are forced to institute
and ordain ministers with a rite of our own, with-
out tonsure, without unction, without mitre, or
staff, without gloves or censer, in fine, without
bishops." (December 16th, 1530.)
(a.d. 1531.) The inhabitants of Riga, and the
prince Albert of Prussia, ask Luther to send them
ministers.
The king of Sweden, Gustavus the First, asks
him also for a preceptor for his son. (April 1539.)
Page 28, col. 2. " the abolition of the monastic
xotcs." — In his treatise Be Vitanda Hominum Doc-
trina, he says of the bishops and dignitaries of the
church, " Let these hardened and impure ones, who
have incessantly in their mouths ' Christianity,
Christianity,' learn that it is not for them that I
have written on the necessity of eating meat, of ab-
staining from confession, and breaking images ;
not for them, who are like the unclean that pol-
luted the camp of Israel. If I have taught these
thmgs, it is to deliver the captive consciences of
those unhappy monks, who doubt if they can break
such vows without sin." (Seckendorf, lib. i. sect.
50, p. 202.)
Page 29, col. I. "Nine nuns came to me yester-
day."— Nine nuns had been carried off from their
convent, and brought to Wittemberg. " They call
me a ravisher," says Luther; "yes, and a thrice
happy one like Christ, who also was a ravisher on
earth, when, by his death, he took from the prince
of this world his weapons and his power, and car-
ried him away captive." (Cochlaeus, p. 73.)
Page 30, col. 1. "His old friend Carlstadt."—
Carlstadt was canon and archdeacon of the colle-
giate church of All Saints, and was its dean when
Luther entered as doctor in 1512. (Seckendorf, 1.
i.p.72.)
Page 30, col. 1, last line but one. "Beyond Carl-
stadt, glimpses tnight be seen of MiUizer." — Letter of
doctor Martin to the Christians of Antwerp. " We
believed, during the reign of the pope, that the
spirits which make a noise and disturbance in the
night, were those of the souls of men, who after
death, return and wander about in expiation of
their sins. This erroi-, thank God, has been dis-
covered by the Gospel, and it is known at present,
that they are not the souls of men, but nothing else
than those malicious devils who used to deceive
meu by false answei-s. It is they that have brought
so much idolatry into the world.
" The devil seeing that this sort of disturbance
could not last, has devised a new one ; and begins
to rage in his members, I mean in the imgodly,
through whom he makes his way in all sorts
of chimerical follies and extravagant doctrines.
This won't have baptism, that denies the efficacy
of the Lox'd's supper ; a third, puts a world
between this and the last judgment ; others teach
that Jesus Christ is not God ; some say this, others
that ; and there are almost as many sects and be-
liefs as there are heads.
" I must cite one instance, by way of exemplifi-
cation, for I have plenty to do with these sort of
92
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
spirits. Thei'e is not one of them that does think
himself more learned than Luther ; they all try to
win their spui-s against me ; and would to heaven
that they were all such as they think themselves,
and that I were nothing ! The one of whom I
speak assured me, amongst other things, that he
was sent to me by the God of heaven and earth,
and talked most magnificently, but the clown
peeped through all. At last, he ordered me to read
the books of Moses. I asked for a sign in confir-
mation of this order, 'It is,' said he, ' written in
the gospel of St. John.' By this time I had heard
enough, and I told him, to come again, for that we
should not have time, just now, to read the books
of Moses. . . .
" I have plenty to do in the course of the year with
these poor people: the devil could not have found
a better pi'etext for tormenting me. As yet the
world had been full of those clamorous spirits
without bodies, who oppressed the souls of men ;
now they have bodies, and give themselves out for
living angels . . .
" "When the pope reigned we heard nothing of
these troubles. The strong one (the devil) was in
peace in his fortress; but now that a stronger one
than he is come, and prevails against him and
drives him out, as the Gospel says, he storms and
comes forth with noise and fury.
" Dear friends, one of these spirits of disorder
has come amongst you in flesh and blood; he would
lead you astray with the inventions of his pride:
beware of him.
" First, he tells you that all men have the Holy
Ghost. Secondly, that the Holy Ghost is nothing
more than our reason and our understanding.
Thirdly, that all men have faith. Fourthly, that
there is no hell, that at least the flesh only wiH- be
damned. Fifthly, that all souls will enjoy eternal
life. Si.Kthly, that nature itself teaches us to do
to our neighbour what we would he should do to
us ; this he calls faith. Seventhly, that the law is
not violated by concupiscence, so long as we are not
consenting to the pleasure. Eighthly, that he that
has not the Holy Ghost, is also without sin, for he
is destitute of reason.
" All these are audacious propositions, vain
imaginations; if we except the seventh, the others
are not worthy of I'eply. . , .
" It is sufficient for us to know that God wills
no sin. As to his suff'erance of sin, we ought not to
approach the question. The servant is not to know
his master's secrets, simply his master's orders:
how much less should a poor creature attempt to
scrutinize or sound the mysteries and the majesty
of the Creator ? . . .
" To learn the law of God, and to know his son
Jesus Christ, is sufficient to absorb the whole of life.
. . . A.D. 1525." (Luth. Werke, torn. ii. p. 61,sqq.)
Page 31, col. 1. " Luther obtained an order from
the elector for Carlstadt's expulsion." — " As to Carl-
stadt's reproach, that I have driven him away, I
should not much trouble myself if the complaint
were well founded ; but with God's help I hope I
can justify myself in the matter. At all events I
am very glad that he is no longer in our country,
and I would wish he were not in yours."
" Basing himself on one of his wi-itiugs, he would
have almost persuaded me not to confound the
spirit that animated him, with the seditious and
homicidal one of Altstet (Munzer's residence); but
when at my sovereign's command I went myself
among Carlstadt's good christians, I found but too
surely what seeds he had been sowing ; and I
thank God I was not stoned or pelted with mud
there, for the common form of benediction with
which they greeted me was this : ' Get you gone,
in the name of a thousand devils, and may you
break your neck before you get out of the town.' "
(Letter to the Strasburghers. Luther, Werke, t.
ii. p. 58.)
" In the disputations at Leipsig Carlstadt in-
sisted on speaking before me; he left me though to
combat Eck's propositions on the supremacy of the
pope, and on John Huss. . . . He is a poor dis-
puter, with a dull and opiniated head of his own,
. . . but he had, however, a very merry Mary.
" These subjects of scandal do much harm to
the cause of the gosjiel. A French spy once told
me that his king knew all about us ; for he had
heard that we no longer respected either religion
or laws, or even marriage itself, but that with us,
it was like the beasts that perish. (Tischreden, p.
417, 422.)
Carlstadt's Death. " I wish to know whether
Carlstadt died repentant or not. . . ."
" They tell a story of Carlstadt's having been
killed by the devil. A man of gigantic stature is
said to have entered the church where Carlstadt
was preaching, and to have afterwards gone to
Cai'lstadt's house, where he caught up his son as if
to dash out his bi'ains against the floor, but set him
down, and bade him tell his father that he would
return in three days to bear him off". Carlstadt
died the third day. ... I think it likely that he
was seized with sudden terrors, and that he was
killed by the fear of death alone ; for he had always
the greatest dread of dying." (April 7th, 1542.)
Page 33, col. 2. " The peasants first rose up in the
Black Forest." — An important circumstance in the
war of the peasants is, that it broke out while the
troops of the empire were in Italy ; otherwise the
insurrection would have been more quickly sup-
pressed. The peasants of count Sigismond von
Lupfien, in Hegovia (a.d. 1524), began the revolt,
on account of the burdens laid on them (not for
the cause of Lutheranism). They declared this to
William von Furstemberg, who was sent to I'educe
them. . . This first insurrection was apparently
suppressed, when Miinzer roused the peasants of
Thuringia to revolt.
The pious, the ei'udite, the peaceable Melanch-
thou showed how accordant the demands of the
peasants were to the word of God and to justice ;
and exhorted the princes to clemency. Luther
thundered against both parties. (See the text.)
A Franconian song, composed after the war of
the peasants, had for its burthen the verse —
" Look out, peasant, or my horse will be over thee."
This was the counterpart of the war-song of the
Dithmarsen, after they had defeated the black
guard, —
" Look out, horseman, the peasant's upon thee."
The common badge of the insurgent peasants,
was a white cross. Some bodies had the wheel of
fortune on their banners ; others seals, on which
were engraved a ploughshare, with a flail, a rake.
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
93
or a pitchfork, and a sabot placed cross- wise.
(Gropp. Clironique de Wurtzburg, i. 97- Wachs-
muth, p. 36.)
A violent pamplilet appeared anonymously, in
1525, inscribed " To the Assembly of all the Pea-
sants." It bears a wheel of fortune on the title-
page, with this inscription in German verses :
" Now is the time for the wheel of fortune,
God knows beforehand who will keep uppermost —
Peasants, I Romanists,
Good Christians. j Sophists."
And lower down —
" Who makes us sweat so ?
The avarice of the nobles."
And at the bottom —
" Turn, turn, turn.
Will ye, nill ye, thou must turn."
(Strobel, Memoirs on the Literature of the Six-
teenth Century, ii. p. 44. Wachsmuth, p. 55.)
After the taking of Weinsberg, the peasants
pa-ssed a i-esolution in their general council, that no
quarter was to be granted to any prince, count,
baron, noble, knight, priest, or monk, " in a word,
to no men who live in idleness," and committed
the most frightful excesses of every kind. In
Franconia alone, they laid in ruins two hundred
and ninety-three monasteries or castles. They
used to drain the contents of the wine-cellars, and
divide amongst themselves the church ornaments
and the clerical vestments. One of their amuse-
ments was making the nobles take off their hats to
them. . . . The peasant women bore their share in
the war, and marched under a banner of their
own. (Jajger, History of Heilbronn, ii. p. 34.)
When the insurrection had been put down in
Suabia, numbers .of the peasants were crucified,
others beheaded, &c. In Alsace, where the spirit
of revolt had made great progress, duke Antony of
Lorraine collected a body of troops, chiefly out of
the scattered remains of the battle of Pavia, de-
feated the peasants in three encounters (a.d. 1525),
and is said to have slain more than thirty thousand.
He had three hundred prisoners beheaded. (D.
Calmet, Histoire de la Lorraine, i. p. 495, &c.;
Hottinger, Hist, de la Suisse, ii. p. 28 ; Sleidan,
p. 115.)
Page 34, col. 2. "Exhortation to Peace."— " Br.
Martin Luther's sincere exhortation to all chris-
tians, to beware of the spirit of rebellion, 1524.
" The man of the people, tempted beyond all
measure, and crushed by intolerable burthens,
neither will nor can endure any longer, and has
good reasons for striking with flail and mace, as
John of the Mattock threatens to do. ... I am
rejoiced to see the tyrants trembling. . . .
" It belongs to the secular power and the nobles
to complete the work (the work of Reformation).
What is done by the regular authorities cannot be
set down as sedition."
After pointing out that a spiritual, not a tem-
poral insurrection is required, he goes on to say:
" Spread, then, spread the Holy Gospel ; teach,
write, preach that all human establishments are
nothing ; dissuade all from becoming priests,
papists, monks, nuns ; exhort all who ai-e such to
i-enounce their way of life and to make their escape ;
cease to give money for bulls, tapers, bells, pictures,
churches ; tell them that Christian life consists in
faith and charity. Go on two years on this wise,
and you will see what will become of pope, bishops,
cardinals, priesthood, monks, nuns, beils, church-
towers, masses, vigils, surplices, copes, tonsures,
rules, statutes, and the whole of this vermin, this
buzzing swarm of the papal reign. The whole will
have disappeared like smoke,"
Page 38, col. 2. "Thomas Munzer, the leader of
the Thuringian peasants.'" — Miiiizer laid d(jwn cer-
tain stages in the christian's state. First, purifica-
tion (Entgrobung), or the state of renouncing the
grosser sins; as gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery.
Second, the studious state, or that in which the
mind dwells on another life and labours to improve.
Third, contemplation ; that is, meditations on sin
and on grace. Fourth, weariness; that is, the
state in which fear of the law makes us hate our-
selves and inspires us with regret at our sins.
Fifth, suspension of grace; that is, either profound
dejection, profound incredulity, and despair like
that of Judas, or, on the contrary, the throwing
ourself through faith on God, and leaving all to his
disposal. ..." He once wrote to me and Melanch-
thon, ' I like you of Wittemberg attacking the
pope; but your prostitutions, which you call mar-
riages, like me not.' " He taught that a man
ought not to sleep with his wife except assured
beforehand, by a divine revelation, that their off-
spring would be holy; that else it was adultery. —
(Tischred. p. 292, 293.)
Miinzer professed to have received his doctrine
by divine revelations, and to teach nothing but
what was directly communicated by God. He
had been expelled from Prague, and many other
towns, when he took up his final residence at
Alstet in Saxony, where lie declaimed against
the pope, and, what was more dangerous still,
against Luther himself.
Scripture, said Munzer, promises that God wUl
grant to him who asketh. Now, he cannot refuse
a sign to him who seeks a true knowledge of his
will. . . . He said that God manifested his will by
dreams. — (Gnodalius, ap.Rer. Germ. Scr. ii. p. 151 ;
History of Miinzer, by Melanchthon, Luth. Werke,
t. ii. p. 405.)
Page 39, col. 2. " One cannot but be surprised at
the severity with which Luther speaks of their defeat."
— " The reason of my writing so violently against
the peasants is my hori-or at seeing them forcing
the timid into their ranks, and so dragging inno-
cent sufferers under God's visitation. . . ."
To John R'uhel, his brother-in-law : — "It is
piteous to see the vengeance which has overtaken
these poor people. But what was to be done 1 It
is God's will to strike terror into them; otherwise,
Satan would be doing worse than the princes are
now doing. The lesser evil must be preferred to
the greater. . . ."(May 23rd, 1525.)
Page 40, col. 2. " T/i£ violence with which princes
and bishops." — " Good princes and lords, you are
in too great a hurry to see me die, me, who am
only a poor man; with my death you feel assui-ed
of victory. But if you had eai's to hear, I would
tell you sti'ange things; and one is, that if Luther
died, not a man of you would be sure of his life and
dominions. ... Go on merrily, kill, burn ; but,
with God's grace, I yield not an inch. I pray you,
however, when you have killed me, not to call me
to life in order to kill me again. ... I have not to
do, I see, with rational beings. All the wild beasts
94
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
of Germany are let loose upon me, like wolves or
boars, to tear me in pieces. ... I write to warn
you, but to no purpose. God has struck you with
blindness." (Cochlseus, p. 87.)
Page 41, col. 1. " Bucer . . . . concealed Ins
opinions for some time from Luther." — On the 14th
of October, 1539, he wrote to Bucer, " Give my
respectful i-egards to J. Sturm and J. Calvin,
whose books I have perused with singular gratifica-
tion."
Page 41, col. 1. " Ziclngle and (Ecolampadius."
— " (Ecolampadius and Zwingle said, ' We leave
Luther in peace, because he is the first through
whom God has vouchsafed us his Gospel; but
after the death of Luther we will push our own
opinions!' They knew not that they would die
before Luther." (Tischred. p. 283.)
"At first, (Ecolampadius was a fine-hearted
being ; but he subsequently became sour and em-
bittered. Zwingle, too, was at first full of vivacity
and agreeability ; and he, too, turned morose and
melancholy." (Ibid.)
" After hearing Zwingle at the conference of
Marburg, I considered that he was an excellent
man, and (Ecolampadius as well. ... I have been
much annoyed at seeing you publish Zwingle's
book to the most Christian king, with a host of
favourable testimonies prefixed to it, although you
were aware that it contained matter off"ensive to
myself and to all pious persons. Not that I envy
the honours paid to Zwingle, at whose death I
grieved ; but no consideration whatever should
tempt any one to do aught prejudicial to purity of
doctrine." (May 14th, 1538.)
Page 41, col. 1. " I know enough, and more than
enough of Bucer^s iniquity." " Master Bucer for-
merly thought himself exceedingly learned. He
never was ; for he publishes that all people have
but one and the same religion, and are so saved.
This is madness with a vengeance." (Tischreden,
p. 184.)
"Dr, Luther was shown a large book, written
by one William Postel, a Frenchman, on Unity in
the Wo7-M, where he laboured to prove the articles
of faith from reason and nature, in the view of con-
verting the Turks and Jews, and bringing all men to
one same belief. The doctor observes, ' We have
had similar works on natural theology ; and this
writer proves the proverb — The French are lack-
brains. We shall have visionaries arising who
will undertake to reconcile all kinds of idolatry
with a show of faith, and so extenuate idolatry.' "
(Ibid. 68, verso.)
Bucer made many attempts to be on good terms
again with Luther. The latter writes (a.d. 1532),
"As far as I am personally concerned, I could
easily forbear you ; but there are crowds of men
here (as you may have seen at Smalkalde) ready
to rebel against my authority. I can in no wise
allow you to pretend that you have not erred, or to
say that we have mistaken each other. The best
plan for you is to acknowledge the whole frankly,
or to keep your peace, and teach henceforvv-ard
sound doctrine only. There are some among us,
as Amsdorf, Osiander, and others, who cannot
away with your subterfuges."
After the revolt of the Anabaptists (a.d. 1535),
fresh attempts were made to unite the reformed
churches of Switzerland, Alsace, and Saxony under
one common confession of faith. Luther writes to
Capito (Koepstein), Bucer's friend, and minister at
Strasburg, " My (Catherine thanks you for the gold
ring you sent her ;" then, after mentioning that it
had been either lost or stolen, he says, " The
poor woman is greatly distressed, because I had
told her the present was a happy gage of the
future concord of your church and ours." (July
9th, 1537.)
Page 42, col. I. " This forbearance could not last.
The publication De Libera Arbitrio" (Of the Freedom
of the Will). — " You say less, but you grant more
to freedom of the will than any one else ; for you
do not define free-will, and yet grant it every
thing. I would prefer receiving the doctrine of
the sophists and of their master, Peter Lombard ;
who tell us that free-will is no more than the
faculty of distinguishing and choosing between
good and evil, according as we are directed by
grace or not. Peter Lombard believes with Au-
gustin, that if free-will have nothing to direct it, it
can only lead man to sin. So Augustin, in his
second book against Julian, calls it the slave mil,
rather than free tdll." (De Servo Arbitrio, p. 477j
verso.)
Page 42, col. 1, the last line but one. " There is
no longer God, nor Christ, nor Gospel." — " If God
has foreknowledge ; if Satan is the prince of this
world ; if original sin has lost us ; if the Jews,
seeking righteousness, have fallen into unrighteous-
ness ; whilst the Gentiles, seeking unrighteousness,
have found righteousness (freely offered unto
them); if Christ has redeemed us by his blood ;
there can be no free-will for men or for angels.
Either Christ is superfluous ; or we must admit
that he has only redeemed the vilest part of man."
(De Servo Arbitrio, p. 525, vero.)
Page 42, col. 2. " The more Luther struggles." —
Pushed hard by contradictions, Luther is reduced
to maintain the following propositions : — " Grace
is gratuitously given to the most unworthy and
least deserving ; it is not to be obtained by study,
work, by any efforts, great or little ; it is not even
granted to the ardent zeal of the best and most
virtuous of men, whose sole pursuit is righteous-
ness." (De Servo Arbitrio, p. 620.)
Page 42, col. 2. "And, to his latest day, the
name of him." — " What you tell me of Erasmus's
foaming against me, I can see in his letters
He is a most trifling man, who laughs at all
religions like his Luciau, and only writes seriously
when he wishes to retort and annoy." (May 28th,
1529.)
" Erasmus shows a spirit worthy of himself by
thus persecuting the name of Lutheran, which
constitutes his safety. Why is he not oft" to his
Hollanders, his Frenchmen, his Italians, his Eng-
lishmen, &c. ? . . . He seeks by these flattei-ers to
secure himself an asylum; but he will find none,
and, betwixt two stools, will come to the ground.
Had the Lutherans hated him as his own country-
men do, he would live at Bale at the I'isk of his
life. But let Christ judge this atheist, this Epi-
curus." (March 7th, 1529.)
Page 43, col. 1 . " If I fight with dirt, ^c."— The
original epigram is as follows : —
" Hoc scio pro certo, quod, si cum stercore certo,
Vinco vel vincor, semper ego maculor."
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
95
Page 43. col. 2. " / have chosen to practise what
I preached." — Luther, in preacliing the marriage
of priests, thought only of putting an end to the
shameful lie they daily gave to their monastic
vows. It never occurred to him at this time
that a married priest would be led to prefer his
family according to the flesh, to that entrusted to
him by God and the Church. Yet he himself
could not always withdraw himself from the selfish
feelings of a father ; and expressions sometimes
escaped him, lamentably at variance with charity
and devotion, as they are understood and fre-
quently practised by Catholic priests.
" It is quite sufficient," he says in one of his
charges to a pastor, " if the people communicate
three or four times in the year, and that publicly.
To administer the communion in private would
become too heavy a burthen on ministers, es-
pecially in seasons of pestilence. Besides, the
Church ought not to be rendered in this manner,
as regards her sacraments, the slave of individuals,
above all, of those who despise her, yet would,
nevertheless, have the Church in all cases ever
ready to administer to them, although they do
nothing for the Church." (November 26th, 1539.)
He himself, however, acted upon very diff"erent
maxims ; displaying on serious emergencies all the
heroism of charity.
" I have turned my house into a hospital, as all
others were frightened. I have received the pas-
tor into my house (his wife has just fallen a victim)
and all his family." (November 4th, 1527.)
Doctor Luther, speaking of the death of Dr.
S^bald and his wife, whom he had visited in their
sickness and touched, said, " They died of sorrow
and disti'ess more than of the plague." He took
their children into his house, and being told that
he was tempting God's providence ; " Ah !" said
he, " mine has been a good schooling, which has
taught me to tempt God in this way."
The plague being in two houses, they wanted to
sequester a deacon who had entered them ; Lu-
ther would not allow it, both from trust in God,
and unwillingness to create alarm, (December,
1538. Tischreden, p. 356.)
Page 44, col. 1. " Pre-occupied with household
cares." — " We have excellent wine from the prince's
cellar, and we should become perfect evangelists, if
the Gospel fattened us eqnally." (March 8th,
1523.
Luther usually concludes his letters, at this pe-
riod, with such words as these : Mea casta, Domi-
nus mens, imperatrix mea Ketha, te salutat. My dear
rib, my master, my empress Ketha salutes thee.
" My lord Ketha was at her new kingdom at Ziels-
dorf (a small property belonging to Luther) when
thy letters an-ived."
He writes to Spalatin : " My Eve wishes for thy
prayers to God to preserve to her her two infants,
and to help her happily to conceive and become
the mother of a third." (May 15th, 1528.)
Luther had three sons, John, Martin, Paul ; and
three daughters, Elizabeth, Madeleine, and Mar-
garet ; the two first daughters died young, one at
the age of eight months, the other at thirteen
years of age ; on the tomb of the first, is written.
Hie dormit Elisahetha, filiola Lutheri. The male
line of Luther became extinct in 1759. (Ukert, i.
p. 92.)
There is, in the church of Kieritzsch (a Saxon
village), a likeness of Luther's wife, in plaster,
bearing the following inscription : Catarina Luther,
gebohren ton Bohraii, 1540. This likeness had be-
longed to Luther. (Ukert, i. 364.)
Page 43, col. 2. " Marks the end of this period of
atony." He was exceedingly wrath with too vehe-
ment preachers. If N * * * cannot be more mo-
dei-ate, he writes to Hausmann, I shall get the
prince to eject him.
" I have already begged you," he writes to this
same preacher, " to preach more peaceably the
word of God, abstaining from all personalities, and
from whatever gives annoyance to the people with-
out adequate results. . . At the same time, you
are too lukewarm about the sacrament, and are
too long without communicating.'' (February 10th,
1528.)
" We have a preacher from Koenigsberg, who
wants to introduce I know not how many regula-
tions, touching bells, wax-tapers, and other things
of the like sort. ... It is not needful to pi'each so
often. I hear that they give three sermons every
Sunday, at Koenigsberg. Where is the use of
that ? two are quite enough ; and for the whole
week, two or three. Daily preaching takes one
into the pulpit without sufficient meditation, and
we preach whatever comes uppermost, whether to
the purpose or beside it. For God's sake, moderate
the temper and the zeal of our preachers. This
Koenigsberg preacher is too vehement, and trage-
dises, and glooms and discourses about trifles."
(July 16th, 1528.)
" Did I want to grow rich, I would give up
preaching, and turn mountebank. I should find
more ready to pay for seeing me, than I have
hearers gratis now." (Tischred. p. 186.)
Page 43, col. 2. " So let ns honour marriage." —
As early as the 25th of May 1524, he wrote to
Capiton and Bucer: " I rejoice in the marriages
you are contracting between the priests, monks,
and nuns ; I love this array of husbands against
the bishops of Satan, and approve the choice you
have made for the different parishes ; in fact, there
is nothing that you tell me but gives me the live-
liest satisfaction: go on and prosper. . . . I will say
yet more, we have of late years made concessions
enough to the weak. Besides, since they harden
themselves daily, we must speak and act with all
freedom. ... I am thinking myself of giving up
the cowl, which I have worn so long for the sup-
port of the weak, aud in mockery of the pope."
(May 25th, 1524.)
Page 43, col. 2. " / have not liked to refuse giving
my father the hope of posterity." — " The affair of the
peasants has emboldened the papists, and much
injured the cause of the gospel;and so we christians
must now lift up the head higher. It is to this end,
and that it may not be said we preach the gospel
without practising it, that I am going to marry
a nun ; my enemies were triumphing; they cried,
lo ! lo ! I have wished to prove to them that 1 am
not disposed to beat a retreat, though something
old and infinn. And perhaps I may do yet some-
thing else, at least I hope so, to damp their joy and
to strengthen my own words." (August 16th,
1525.)
Hardly was Luther married before his enemies
spread the report that his wife was about to be
96
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
confined. Erasmus caught at the report with great
eagerness, and hastened to spread it among all his
correspondents, but he was compelled, at a subse-
quent pei'iod, to eat his words. (Ukert, i. 189 — 192.)
Eek and others attacked him with numerous
satires on the occasion of his marriage, to which he
replied in various pieces which were collected
under the title of the Fable of the Lion and the Ass.
Page 44. col. 1, near the end. " We are daily
plunging deeper into debt." — In 1527, he was obliged
to pledge three of his goblets for fifty florins, and
at last sold one for twelve florins. His ordinary
income never exceeded two hundred Misnia florins
a year. . . . The publishers made him an off'er of
four hundred florins yearly, but he could not re-
solve on accepting it. In spite of his straitened
means, his liberality was profuse; he gave to the
poor the presents made to his children at their
baptism. A poor scholar once asking him for a
little money, he begged his wife to give him some;
but, she replying that there was none in the house,
Luther then took up a silver vase, and putting it
into his hands desired him to go and sell it to some
goldsmith for his own use. (Ukert, ii. p. 7-)
" Doctor Pomer brought Luther one day a
hundred florins of which some nobleman had just
made him a present, but he would not accept them;
he instantly gave half of it to Philip, and wished
Dr. Pomer to take back the rest, but he would
not. (Tischr., p. 59.) " I have never asked a single
farthing of my gracious lord." (Tischr., p. 53 — 60.)
Page 44. col. 2. " asking them nothing for all my
labour." — " A lawful gain has God's blessing, as
when one gains one farthing out of twenty, but a
dishonest profit will be accursed. Thus it shall be
with the printer of * * * who gains one farthing
out of every two ... on the books he has had to
print for me. The printer, John Grunenbei-ger, said
to me conscientiously, ' Sir doctor, this brings me in
too much; I cannot supply copies enough.' This was
a man fearing God, and he lias been blessed."
(Tischr. p. 62, verso.)
" You know, my dear Amsdorf, that I alone
cannot supply all the presses, and yet they all come
to me for this food ; there are here nearly six hun-
dred printers." (April 11th, 1525.)
Page 46, col. 2. " Wherefore should I be pro-
voked with the papists f It seems, however, that
they attempted to make away with him by poison.
(See letters written by him in Jan. and Feb , 1525 ;
Cochlseus, p, 25 ; Tischreden, p. 416, and p. 274,
verso.)
Page 47, col \. " A clandestine but most dangerous
persecution." — " To the christians of Holland, of
Brabant, and of Flanders (on the occasion of the
torture of two Austin friars, who were burnt to
death at Brussels).
" Oh ! how shocking a death have these two poor
men suffered. But what glory are they now en-
joying in God's presence ! It is a small thing to be
despised and killed by this world, when we know
that, as the Psalmist says (cxvi. 15.), ' Precious in
the sight of the Lord, is tlie death of his saints.' And
what is the world compared to God ? . . . What
joy, what delight must the angels have felt when
they welcomed these two souls ! God be praised
and blessed to all eternity, who has permitted us,
even us, to hear and to see true saints and real
martyrs. We, who have aforetime honoured so
many false saints !" (July, 1523.)
" The noble lady Argula von Staufen, passes
her life in continual suffering and peril. She is
filled with the spirit, the word, and the knowledge
of Christ. She has attacked the academy of
Ingolstad with her writings, because of their forcing
a young man, named Arsacius, into a shameful
revocation of his faith. Her husband, who is him-
self a tyi'ant, and who has just lost a post thi'ough
her, is at a loss what to do. . . . As for her, though
surrounded by so many dangers, she maintains a
firm faith, athough, when writing to me, she con-
fesses her courage is sometimes shaken. She is a
precious instrument in the hands of Christ. I
mention her to you, that you may see how God can
confound by this tceak vessel the mighty of this
world, and those who glorify themselves in their
wisdom." {x.T>. 1524.)
Luther's translation of the Bible inspired a
general itch of disputation. Even women chal-
lenged theologians, and averred that all the doctors
were in darkness. Some of them were for mounting
the pulpits, and teaching in the chui'ches. Had
not Luther declared that by baptism we are all
teachers, preachers, bishops, popes, &c.? (Coch-
loeus, p. 51.)
Page 47, col. 1. "and suffered to die of hunger."
— One day, when some observations were made at
Luther's table, on the little generosity shown to
preachers, he said, " The world is incapable of
giving anything with hearty will ; it requires to be
dealt with by clamour and importunity ; and such
impudence is brother Matthew's, who, by dint of
begging, got the elector to promise that he would
buy him a fur robe ; but, as the prince's treasurer
took no notice of it, brother Matthew called out in
the middle of his sermon, as he was jireaching
before the elector, ' Where is my fur robe V The
order was i-epeated to the treasui'er, but he again
forgot it ; so the preacher again referred to the
gown in the elector's presence, saying this time,
* Alas ! I have not yet seen my fur robe : where
is it ?' And upon this he finally obtained the pro-
mised boon." (Tischreden, p. 189, verso.)
Nevertheless, Luther constantly complains of
the miserable state of the ministers generally.
" Their salaries," he says, " are often grudged
them ; and those who formerly would squander
millions of florins on a set of rogues and impos-
tors, are unwilling in these days to spare one hun-
dred to a preacher." (March 1st, 1531.)
" There is now established here (at Wittemberg)
a consistorial court for questions relating to mar-
riage, and to oblige the peasants to better discipline
in regard to the payments of their pastors ; a re-
gulation which, perhaps, would be of equal benefit
if observed towards some of the nobility and the
magistracy." (January 12th, 1541.)
Page 47, col. 1. " There is nothing certain with
regard to the apparitions." — "Joachim writes me
word, that a child has been born at Bamberg with
a lion's head ! but that it died almost instantly ;
and that there had also appeared the sign of the
cross over the city ; but the priests have taken
care that these things should not be noised
abroad." (January 22ud, 1525.) " Princes die in
great numbers this year, which perhaps may ac-
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
97
count fox* this number of signs." (September 6th,
1525.)
Page 47, ci)l. 1. "when the Turks encamped." —
Luther's first idea seemed to h.ive been that the
Turks were a succour sent him from God. " They
are," says he," the instruments of divine vengeance."
A.D. 1526. (PrcTeliari adversns Tiircas est repugnare
Deo risitanti iniquitatcs jiostras per illos.) He did
not wish tlie Protestants to arm themselves against
them in defence of Papists; for " these (he said)
are no better than the Turks."
He says, in a preface which he prefixed to a
book of doctor Jonas's, that the Turlcs equal the
Papists, or rather surpass them, in those very
things which the latter think so essential to salva-
tion ; such as alms-giving, fasts, maceration.?, pil-
grimages, the monastic life, ceremonials, and all
other e.xternal works; and that it is for this reason
that the Papists are reserved touching the worship
of the Mahomedans. He takes occasion from this
to laud and elevate over these Mahomedan and
Romanist practices, " that pure religion of the
soul and spirit taught by the Holy Gospel."
Elsewhere he draws a parallel between the Turk
and the pope, concluding thus: " If we must needs
oppose the Turk, so must we in like manner oppose
the pnpe." Nevertheless, when he found the Tui"ks
seriously menacing the independence and peace of
Germany, he repeatedly recommended the main-
tenance of a permanent army upon the fi'ontiers
of Turkey, and often repeated that all "ho bore the
name of Christians ought to be fervent in prayer
to God for the success of the emperor's arms
against the infidels.
Luther exhorted the elector, in a letter of the
29th of May, 1538, to take part in the war that was
preparing against the Turks ; and begged of him
to forget the intestine quarrels of Germany, in
order to turn all his forces against the common
enemy.
A former ambassador in Turkey told Luther,
one day, that the sultan had asked him, " Who is
this Luther % and what is his age ?" And that
when he learnt he was forty-eight, he said, " I wish
he was not so old ; tell him, that in me he has a
gracious lord." " May God preserve me from all
such gi'aciuus lords ! " said Luther, crossing him-
self. (Tischreden, p. 432, verso.)
Page 48, col. 1. "the landgrave. . . .believing him-
self to be menaced." — Luther, in a letter to chancellor
Briick, speaking of the landgrave's preparations
for war,says,"A similar aggression on our part would
be a great reproach to the Gospel. It would not
be a revolt of the peasants, but a revolt of princes,
which would bring the most fearful evils on Ger-
manv. It is what Satan desires above all things."
(May, 1528.)
Page 48, col. 1 . " duke George of Saxony." — " Pray
with me, that it may please the God of mercy to
convert duke George to his Gospel, or that, if
he be not worthy of it, he may be taken out of the
world." (March 27th, 1526.)
Luther writes to the elector, on the subject of his
quai-rels with duke George. (December 31st, 1528.)
. ..." I pray your grace to abandon me entirely to
the decision of the judges, supposing that duke
George should insist upon it ; for it becomes my
duty to expose my own life, rather than that your
grace should incur the least detriment. Jesus
Christ will, I feel sure, arm me with sufficient
strength to resist Satan, singly."
Page 48, col. 1. "this Moah, vho exalts his
pride." — Duke George was, after all, a good-tem-
pered persecutor enough. Having expelled eighty-
four Lutherans from Leipsic, he allowed them per-
mission to retain their houses, to leave there their
wives and children, and to visit them at the time
of the yearly fair. In another instance, Luther
having advised the Protestants of Leipsic to resist
the orders of their duke, he (the duke) contented
himself with praying the elector of Saxony to in-
terdict all communication between Luther and
his subjects. (Cochlteus, p. 230.)
Page 48, col. 2. " the party of the Reformation broke
out." — Luther still tried to restrain his favour-
ers. On the 22nd of May, 1529, he wrote to the
elector to dissuade him from entering into any
league against the emperor, and to exhort him to
put himself entirely in the hands of God.
Page 49, col. 2. " the elector brought him. as near
as possible to Augsburg." — He left Torgau the 3rd
of April, and arrived at Augsburg the 2nd of May.
His suite was composed of one hundred and sixty
horsemen. The theologians who accompanied
him were Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, Agricola,
Spalatin, and Osiander. Luther, excommunicated
and proscribed the empire, remained at Cobui'g. —
(Ukert, t. i. p. 232.)
Page 50, col. 1. " cdl the comfort he got teas rough
rebuke." — Sometimes, however, he sympathised
with him in his trials : — " You have confessed
Christ, made peace-off'erings, obeyed Ctesar, suffer-
ed injuries, endured blasphemies; you have never
rendered evil for evil; in fact, you have been a
worthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard, as be-
cometh the godly. Rejoice, then, and be comforted
in the Saviour. Man of long-suffering, look up,
and raise your drooping head, for your redemption
draweth nigh. I will canonize you as a faithful
member of Christ; what more of glory would you
seek?"— (September 15th, 1530.)
Page 50, col. 2, last line but four. " The Protest-
ant profession of faith." — "At the diet of Augsburg,
duke William of Bavaria, who was strongly op-
posed to the reformers, having said to Dr. Eck,
' Cannot we refute these opinions by the Holy
Scriptures ? ' ' No,' said he,' but by the Fathers.'
The bishop of IMentz then said, ' Mark ! how
famously our theologians defend us ! The Luther-
ans show us their belief in Scripture, and we ours
out of Scripture.' The same bishop then added;
' The Lutherans have one article which we cannot
confute, whatever may be the case with the rest, —
the one on marriage.' " — (Tischred. p. 1)9.)
Page 51, col. 1. " If the emperor chooses to publish
an edict." — Luther, conscious of his power, says,
" If I were killed by the Papists, my death would
protect those I leave behind; and these wild beasts
would perhaps be more cruelly punished for it
than even I could wish. For there is One who
will say some day, Where is thy brother Abel I And
He shall mark 'them on the forehead, and they
shall be wanderers on the face of the earth. . . .
Our race is now under the protection of our Lord
God, who has written, ' I will show mercy unto
thousands in them that love me and keep my com-
98
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
mandments.' And I believe in these words ! "
(June 30tli, 1530.)
" If I were to be killed in any disturbance of the
Papists, I should bear off with me such numbers
of bishops, priests, and monks, that all would say,
'Dr. Martin Luther is followed to the tomb by a
grand procession indeed. He must have been a
great doctor, learned and good, beyond all bishops,
priests, and monks; therefore they must all be at
his interment, and, like him, on their backs.' So we
sliould take our last journey together." (a.d. 1531.
Cochlseus, p. 211. Extract from the book of Lu-
ther, entitled, " Advice to the Germans.")
The Catholics, he was told, reproached him with
many false interpretations in his translation of the
Scriptures; he replied, " They have much too long
eai's! and their fil-hau ! lii-hau ! is too weak to be
able to judge of a translation from Latin into Ger-
man. . . . Tell them that it is Dr. Martin Luther's
pleasure that an ass and a Papist should be one and
the same thing."
" Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas."
— (Passage cited by Cochlceus, 201, verso.)
Page 51, col. 1. " Let them restore to us Leonard
Keiser." — " Not only the title of king, but also that
of emperor is due to him, since he has conquered
him who has no equal upon earth. He is not a
priest only, — but a sovereign pontiff, and a true
pope, who has just offered up his own body as
a sacrifice unto God. With good reason was he
called Leonhard, — that is to say, ' the strength of
a lion.' He was a lion for force and intrepidity."
(October 22nd, 1527.)
" If we were to believe Coehlteus, Luther was a
persecutor in his turn. In 1532, a Lutheran having
recanted, Luther had him taken up and Carried to
Wittemberg, where he was imprisoned, and a pro-
cess commenced against him. The charge against
him being insufficient, he was released, but was
ever after persecuted in an underhand way by the
Lutherans." (Cochloeus, p. 218.)
Page 51, col. 2. " They entered a protest . . . pre-
pared for war." — Nevertheless, the issue of the
struggle was so much feared on all hands, that,
contrary to all expectation, peace was preserved.
(June, 1531.)
The fear of a fresh rising of the peasants, greatly
contributed to keep the princes in their pacific in-
t-ntious. (July 19th, 1530.)
Page 51, col. 2. ^^ Luther was accused of having
instigated the Protestants." — So far from it, he had
ever since 1529 dissuaded the elector from entering
into any league whatever against the emperor. . . .
" We cannot approve of any such alliance. Should
any evil result from it, say open war, all would fall
upon our conscience ; and we would prefer death
a hundred times to the reproach of having shed
blood for the Gospel's sake." (November 18th, 1529.)
Page 51, col. 2. " I have not advised resistance to the
emperor." — In the Book of the Table Talk (p. 397,
verso), Luther speaks more explicitly. " There
will be no fighting for religion's sake. The em-
peror has taken the bishoprics of Utrecht and of
Liege, and has offered to allow the duke of Bruns-
wick to seize that of Hildesheim. He hungers and
thirsts for ecclesiastical property ; he absolutely
devours it. Our princes will not suffer this ; they
will want to eat with him ; on this they will come
to buffets." (a.d. 1530.)
" I have often been asked by my gracious mas-
ter, what I should do were a highwayman or mur-
derer to attack me ? I should resist, out of loyalty
to the prince whose subject and servant I am. I
might slay the thief, even with the sword, and still
afterwards receive the sacrament. But if it were
for the word of God, and as a preacher, that I was
attacked, I ought to suffer, and leave vengeance to
God. I do not take a sword with me into the pul-
pit, only on the road. The Anabaptists are knaves
in despair ; they carry no arms, and boast of their
patience." (1539.) Luther answers, on the question
of right of resistance, " That according to public
law, the law of nature and reason, resistance to
unjust authority is permissible : there is no diffi-
culty but upon the ground of religion."
" The question would not have been difficult to
resolve in the time of the apostles, for then all the
authorities were pagans, not Christians. But now
that all the princes are Christians, or pretend to be
such, it is difficult to decide ; for a prince and a
Christian are near of kin. Whether a Christian
may resist the powers that be, is a question preg-
nant with matter. ... In fine, it is from the pope
I wrest the sword, not from the emperor."
He thus sums up himself the arguments he might
have addressed to the Gei'mans, if he had exhorted
them to resistance.
" 1. The emperor has neither the right nor the
power to give such ordei-s ; certain it is, if he does
so order, we ought not to obey him.
" 2. It is not I who excite distui'bance; I pi'event
it, I am opposed to it. Let them consider whether
they are not the beginners, who command that
which is contrary to God.
" 3. Do not make a jest of the matter: if you
will make the fool drunk {iiarren Luprian) take
care that he does not spit in your face; besides he
is thirsty enough, and only desires to drink his fill.
" 4. Well, then, you will fight ? bend your heads
then for a blessing: success attend you! may God
give you the victory! I, doctor Martin Luther, your
apostle, I have spoken, I have warned you as was
my duty." . . .
" To kill tyrants is a thing not permitted to any
man who is not in some public capacity ; for the
fifth commandment says : ' Thou shalt not kill.'
But if I surprise a man with my wife or my
daughter, although he be not a tyrant, I am justi-
fied in killing him. So, if he were to take by force
such a man's wife, another man's daughter, or
another's goods and estates, his citizens and sub-
jects, sick of his violence and tyranny, might
assemble and slay him as they would any other
murderer or highway robber." (Tischreden, p. 397,
verso, sqq.)
" The good and ti'uly noble lord, Gaspard von
Kokritz, has desired me, my dear John, to write to
thee my opinion, in the event of Ctesar's making war
on our princes on account of the Gospel, whether it
be lawful for us to resist and defend ourselves. I had
already written my opinion on this subject in the
lifetime of duke John. It is now a little late to
ask my advice, since the princes have decided tliat
they may and will both resist and defend themselves,
and that they will not abide by what I shall say.
. . . Do not strengthen the arms of the ungodly
against our princes ; leave all to the wrath and
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
9!)
judgment of God, which they have, up to this day,
sought with fury, with laughter and riotous joy.
Nevertheless moderate our side, by the example of
the Maccabees who would not follow those that
fought against Autiochus, but, in their simplicity
of heart, chose death rather." (8lh February,
1539.)
In his book De Secidari Potestate, dedicated to the
duke of Saxony, he says : "InMisnia, in Bavaria,
and other places, the tyrants have issued an edict,
commanding all to deliver up the New Testament
to the magistrates. If their subjects obey this edict,
it is not a book which at the peril of their souls they
deliver up ; it is Christ himself whom they give
into the hands of Herod. Howevei", if they are
taken away by violence, it must be endured.
Princes are of this world, and this world is the
enemy of God."
" We must not obey Caesar if he makes war
against our party. The Turk does not attack his
Alcoran, neither must the emperor attack his
Gospel." (Cochleeus, p. 210.)
Page 51, col. 2. "My opinion, as a theolocj'um,
is . . ." — Tlie elector had asked Luther if he might
resist the emperor sword in hand. Luther replied
in the negative, only adding : " If, however, the em-
peror, not content with being the master of the states
of princes, should go so far as to require of them
to persecute, put to death, or banish their subjects
on account of the Gospel, the princes, knowing
that this would be acting in opposition to the will
of God, ought to refuse obedience ; otherwise, they
would be doing violence to theii' faith, and render-
ing themselves the accomplices of crime. It is
sufficient for them to suffer the emperor to take
the matter into his own hands, — he will have to
answer for it, — and to refrain from supporting their
subjects against him." (March 6th, 1530.)
Page 52, col. 1. " / care not about being accused of
riolence." — The elector had reprimanded Luther on
account of two of his writings (Warning to Jiis
beloved Germans, and, Glosses on the pretended Im-
perial Edict), which he thought too violent. Luther
replied to him (April 10th, 1531), " It was impos-
sible for me to keep silence any longer in this
affair, which concerns me more than any one else.
If I were silent under such a public condemnation
of my doctrine, would it not be equivalent to aban-
doning, to denying it ? Rather than this, I would
brave the anger of all the devils, and of the whole
world, not to mention that of the imperial council-
lors."
Page 52, col. 2. " Anabaptism was in the ascen-
dant."— The Anabaptists had been for a long time
spreading in Germany. " We have here a new kind
of prophets, come from Antwerp, who pretend
that the Holy Ghost is nothing more than the
mind and natural reason." (March 27tli, 1525.)
" There is nothing new, save that they say the
Anabaptists are increasing and spreading in every
direction." (December 28th, 1527.)
He writes to Link (May 12ih, 1528): " Thou
hast, I think, seen my Antischwcrmerum and my
dissertation on the bigamy of the bishops. The
courage of these Anabaptists, when they die, is like
that of the Donatists, of whom Saint Augustin
speaks, or the fury of the Jews in wasted Jerusa-
lem. Holy martyrs, such as our Leonard Keiser,
die in fear and humility, praying for their exe-
cutioners. The obstinacy of these people, on the
contrary, when they are borne to execution, seems
to increase with the indignation of their enemies."
Page 56, cf)l. 1. " iivre executed in the same
horrible manner." — Extract from an old book of
hymns used by the Anabaptists. " The words of
Algerius are miracles. ' Here,' he says, ' others
groan and weep, but I am full of joy. In my
prison the army of heaven appears to me ; thou-
sands of martyrs are with me daily. In all the
joy, all the delight, all the ecstacy of grace, I
am shown my Lord up(m his throne.'
" But thy counti'y, thy friends, thy relatives, thy
profession, canst thou voluntai'ily abandon them ?
He answered those sent to him: ' No man can
banish me from my country ; my country lies
at the foot of the celestial thi'one ; there, my
enemies shall be my friends, and shall join in the
same song.'
" ' Nor doctors, nor artists, nor workmen, can
succeed here ; he that has not strength from on
high, has no strength.' The angry judges threatened
him with the flames. ' In the might of the flames,'
said Algerius, ' you shall acknowledge mine.' "
(Wunderhorn, t. i.)
Page 56. Additions to Ciiafter 2. Book III.
The following extracts from Ruchart (History
of the Reformation in Switzerland) will serve to
show the singular enthusiasm of the Anabaptists :
— "In the year 1529, nine Anabaptists were
apprehended and thrown into prison at Bale.
They were brought before the senate, which sum-
moned the ministers to confer with them, ffico-
lampadius first briefly explained to them the
Apostles' Creed and St. Athanasius's Creed, and
showed them that the belief therein expounded
was the true and indisputable Christian faith (doc-
trine) which Jesus Christ and his apostles had
preached. Then the burgomaster, Adelbert Meyer,
told the Anabaptists that they had just heard a
sound exposition of the Christian faith, and that,
since they complained of the ministers, they ought
to speak out frankly and freely, and boldly ex-
plain in what they felt aggrieved! But no one
answered a word, and they stood looking at each
othei". Then the clerk of the chamber said to one
of them, who was by trade a turner, ' How comes it
that you do not speak now, after having prated so
much elsewhere, in the streets, in the shops, and in
prison V As they still remained silent, Mark
Hedelin, the head tribesman, addressed their
leader, asking, ' What answer, my brother, dost
thou make to this proposition ? ' The Anabaptist
replied, ' I do not recognize you as my brother.'
' Why 1 ' said this nobleman to him. ' Be-
cause you are not a Christian. Repent first,
reform, and quit the magistracy.' ' In what, then,
do you think I sin so heavily ? ' said Hedelin.
' You know well enough,' replied the Anabaptist.
" The burgomaster then took up the woi'd, ex-
horted him to reply in a modest and becoming
manner, and earnestly pressed him to speak to the
question proposed. On this he replied, ' That no
Christian could belong to a worldly magistracy,
because he who fights with the sword will perish
with the sword; that the baptism of children pro-
ceedeth from the devil, and is an invention of the
pope's; adults ought to be baptized, and not in-
fants, according to Jesus Christ's commands.'
H 2
100
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
" fficolampadius undertook to refute him with
all possible gentleness, and to show him that the
passages which he had quoted boi-e a very different
interpretation, as all the ancient doctors testified.
' ]\Iy dear friends,' he said, ' you do not understand
Holy Scripture, and you handle it in a rude and
insufficient mannei*.' And as he was proceeding
to show them the sense of these passages, one of
them, a miller by trade, interrupted him, accusing
him of being a tempter, and an empty talker, say-
ing, that his arguments had nothing to do with
the subjeci; that they had in their hands God's
pure and very word, that they would not forsake
it their life long, and that the Holy Ghost spoke
at the present day through it. At the same time,
he apologized for his want of eloquence, saying,
that he had not studied, that he had not belonged
to any university, and that from his youth he had
hated human wisdom, which is full of deceit; and
that he was well aware of the tricks of the scribes
who were for ever seeking to throw dust in the
eyes of the simple. Whereupon, he begau crying
aud wee])ing, saying, that after he had heard the
word of God, he had forsaken his irregular course
of life ; and that now that, through baptism, he
had received pardon for his sins, he was perse-
cuted of all, whereas, whilst he was sunk in vice of
every kind, no one had rebuked or imprisoned him,
as was now the case. He had been confined iu
the gaol, like a murderer ; what was his crime ?
&c. The conference having lasted to the hour of
dinner, the senate broke up.
" The senate meeting again after dinner, the mi-
nistex's began to question the Anabaptists on the
subject of the magistracy ; and when one of them
had given very fair and satisfactory answers, the
rest evidenced their discontent, declaring that he
was a waverer, and interrupted him. ' Leave us
to speak,' said they to him ; ' we who understand
Scripture better than thou, and can reply better
touching these articles than thou, who art still a
novice, and incapable of defending our doctrine
against foxes.' Then the turner, beginning an
argument, maintained that St. Paul (Rom. xiii.),
when speaking of the superior powers, does not
refer to the magistracy, but to the higher ecclesias-
tical authorities. This (Ecolampadius denied, and
asked in what part of the Bible he found it. The
other said, ' Turn over the leaves of your Old and
New Testament, and you will find that you are en-
titled to a salary. You ax'e better off than I, who
have to support myself with the labour of my hands,
so as to be a burthen to no one.' This sally made
the bystanders laugh. Qi]c(jlampadius remarked to
them, ' Gentlemen, this is not a time for laughing ;
if I receive from the Church my means of support
and existence, I can prove the reasouablenes of
this from Scripture. Language of the sort is sedi-
tious. Pray rather for the glory of the Lord that
God may soften their hardened hearts, and illu-
minate their hearts with his grace.'
" After sevei'al other arguments, as the time of
breaking up the sitting approached, one of them,
who had said nothing the whole day, began howling
and weeping. ' The last day is at hand,' he shouted
forth; 'reform; the axe is already laid to the tree ;
do not, then, calumniate our doctrine on baptism.
I pray you, for the love of Jesus Christ, persecute
not honest folk. Of a verity, the just Judge will
soon come, and will cause all the ungodly to perish.'
" The burgomaster interrupted him, to tell him
there was no need of all this outcry, but that he
should confine himself to reasoning on the points
in question. Nevertheless, he attempted to per-
severe in the same strain, but was prevented. At
last, the burgomaster undertook to justify the con-
duct of the senate towards the Anabaptists, and
stated that they had been arrested, not on account
of the Gospel, or on account of their good conduct,
but on account of their irregularities, their pei'-
juries, and their sedition ; that one of them had
committed murder, another had preached that
tithes were unlawful, a third had excited disturb-
ances, &c. ; that it was for these crimes they had
been arrested, until it had been settled what course
should be pursued with them, &c.
" Hereupon, one of them began crying out,
' Brothers, resist not the ungodly; though the ene-
my should be at your gate, shut it not. Let them
approach ; they cannot harm us without the will
of our Father, since the hairs of our head are num-
bered. Moi-e than this, I say, you must not even
resist a robber iu a wood. Tliink you not that
God watches over you ?' They forced him to de-
sist from this outcry." (Ruchart, Reformc Suisse,
p. 498.)
Another disputation. — "The Zwinglian ministers
spoke to them amicably aud gently, proving to
them that if they taught the truth, they were in the
wrong to separate from the Church, and to preach
in the woods and other solitary places. Then he
briefly expounded to them the doctrine of the
Church. One of the Anabaptists interrupted him
with, ' We have received the Holy Ghost by bap-
tism; we have no need of instruction !' One of the
lords deputies then said, ' We are commissioned
to tell you that the magistrates are pleased to allow
you to depart without further punishment, pro-
vided you quit the country, and promise never to
return, except you are minded to alter your way of
life !' One of the Anabaptists exclaimed, ' What
orders are these ? The magistrates are not masters
of the land, to order us to quit it, or go elsewhere.
God has said. Dwell in the land. I choose to obey
this commandment, and to remain in the country
where I was born, where I was brought up, and
no one has a right to hinder me !' He was now,
however, taught the contrary." {Idem, t. iil.
p. 102.)
" At Bale, an Anabaptist named Coyirad in Gas-
sen used to utter strange blasphemies ; for in-
stance, ' That Jesus Christ was nut our Redeemer,
that he was not God, and that he was not born of
a virgin !' He made no account of prayer, and
when it was pointed out to him that Jesus Christ
had prayed on the Mount of Olives, he answered
with brutal insolence, ' Who heard him V Being
found to be incorrigible, he was condemned to be
beheaded. This impious fanatic reminds me of
another of our own day, who persuaded certain of
our neighbours, some years age, that it behoved to
use neither bread nor wine. And when it was ob-
jected to him one day at Geneva, tliat Christ's first
miracle was changing water into wine, he answered,
' That Jesus Christ was still young at that time:
and that it was a venial fault, which ought to be
forgiven him.' " {Idem, t. iii. p. 104.)
The Reformation, born in Saxony, soon gained the
banks of the Rhine, and proceeded up that stream
to mingle, in Switzerland, with the rationalism of
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
101
the Vaudois ; it even dared to cross into Catholic
Italy. Melanchthon, who kept up a correspondence
with Bembo and Sadolet, both secretaries to the
apostolic chamber, was at first better known than
Luther to the Italian literati ; and the glory of the
first attacks on Rome was attributed to liim. But
Luther's reputation spreading with the importance
of his reformation, the Italians soon learned to
consider him the head of the Protestant party ; and
it is, as such, that Altieri addressed him, in 1542,
in the name of the Protestant churches of the
north-east of Italy (the churches of Venice,
Vicenza, and Trevisa). ..." Engage the most
serene princes of Germany to intercede for us with
the Venetian senate to relax the violent measures
instituted agaiiiSt the Lord's flock, at the suggestion
of the papal ministers. . . . You know the addi-
tion made here to your churches, and how wide is
the gate open to the Gospel. . . . Aid, then, the
common cause." (Seckendorf, c. iii. p. 401.)
Charles the Fifth himself contributed to spread
the name and doctrines of Luther in the Italian
peninsula, by constantly pouring into it from Ger-
many new bands of landshieclits, among whom were
many Protestants. It is well known that George
Von Frundsberg, the leader of the Constable de
Bourbon's German troops, swore that he woidd
strangle the pope with the gold chain that hung
round his neck. . . .
Luther himself was solemnly proclaimed: "A
number of German soldiers assembled one day in
the streets of Rome, mounted on horses and mules.
One of them, named Grundwald, of remarkable
statm'e, dressed himself up like the pope, placed a
triple crown on his head, and mounted on a mule
richly caparisioned. Others tricked themselves
out as cardinals, with mitres on their heads, and in
either scarlet or white robes, according to the per-
sonages they represented. They then set out in
procession, with drums and fifes, followed by an
immense crowd, and with all the pomp customaxy
in pontifical processions. Whenever they passed a
cardinal's house, Grundwald gave his benedic-
tion to the people. He at last alighted from his
mule; and the soldiers, setting him in a chair, bore
him on their shoulders. On reaching the castle of
St. Angelo he takes a large cup, and drinks to
Clement's health, and his comrades follow his
example. He then tenders the oath to his cardi-
nals, adding that he binds them to do homage to the
emperor, as their lawful and only sovereign, and
makes them promise that they will no more trouble
the peace of the empire by their intrigues, but that,
following the commands of Scripture, and the
example of Jesus Christ and the apostles, they will
be submissive to the civil power. After an ha-
rangue, in which he recaiiitulated the wars, parri-
cides, and sacrileges of the popes, the mock pontiff
volunteers a solemn promise to transfer, in form of
a will, his powers and authority to Martin Luther,
who alone, he said, could abolish all abuses of the
kind, and repair the bark of St. Peter, so that it
should no longer be the sport of winds and waves.
Then raising his voice, he exclaimed: ' Let all who
think with me lift up their hands.' The whole of
the soldiery at once lifted up their hands, with
shouts of ' Long live Pope Luther !' All this
took place before the eyes of Clement VII."
(Macree, Ref. in Italy, p. 6C, 6?.)
Zwingle's works, being written in Latin, had a
wider ciiculation in Italy than those of the re-
formers of the north of Germany, who did not
always use the universal and learned language.
No doubt this is one of the reasons for the peculiar
bias taken by the reformation in Italy, particularly
in the academy of Vicenza — where Socinianism
had its birth. Ou February 14tli, 1519, the chief
magistrate of that city writes to him: — "Blaise
Salmonius, bookseller of Leipsic, has sent me some
of your treatises. ... I have liad them printed,
and have sent six hundred copies to France and
Spain. . . . My friends assure me that even in the
Sorbonne there are those who read and aj)prove of
them. The learned of this country have long
desired to see theology treated in an independent
spirit. Calvi, bookseller of Pavia, has undertaken
to distribute great part of the edition through
Italy. He also promises to collect and send all
the epigrams composed in your honour by the
learned of this country. Such is the favour your
courage and zeal have won for you and for the
cause of Christ."
On September 19th, 1520, Burchard Schenk
writes from Venice to Spalatin: — "Luther has
long been known to us by reputation; we say here,
he must beware of the pope! Two months since,
ten of his books were brought here and at once sold.
. . . May God keep him in the path of truth and
charity !" (Seckendoi-f, p. 115.)
Some of Luther's works found their way to
Rome, and even into the Vatican, under the safe-
guard of some pious personage, whose name was
substituted on the title-page for that of the
hei-etical author. In this manner, many cardinals,
to their great mortification, were entrapped into
loud encomiums on the commentary Upon the
Epistle to the Romans, and the Treatise on Jusfifica-
tion of a certain cardinal Fi-egoso, who was no
other than Luther.
Page 56, col. 2. " The momentary union of tJte
Catholics and Protestants against the Anabaptists." —
To rebut the i-eproaches of the Catholics, who
attributed the revolt of the Anabaptists to the
Protestant preachers, the reformers of all sects
made an effort at amalgamation. A conference
took place at Wittemberg (a.d. 1536), to which
Bucer, Capito, and others repaired in the month of
May, to confer with the Saxon theologians. The
conference lasted from the 22nd to the 25th ; on
which day the Formula of Concord, which had
been drawn up by Melanchthon, was agreed to and
signed. Both Luther and Bucer preached, and
proclaimed the union which had just been coil-
eluded between the parties. (Ukert, i. p. 307.)
Page 58, col. I, top of the page. " Given at Wit-
temhenj."—'We find in the Table-talk (p. 320),
"The secret marriage of princes and of great lords
is a true marriage before God; it is not without
analogy to the concubineship of the patriarchs."
(This may serve to explain the exception in favour
of the landgrave.)
Page 58, col. 2. " O^ir wine is poisoned."— Jn
1541, a citizen of Wittemberg, named Clemann
Schober, followed Luther, harquebuss in hand, with
the evident intention of killing him ; he was arrested
and punished. (Ukert, i. p. 323.)
Page 59, col. 1. "Let ns . . . seat ourselces at
102
THE LIFE OF LUTHER,
his table." — Here he was always surrounded by
his children and his friends Melanchthon, Jonas,
Aurifaber, &c., who had supported him under his
labours. A place at this table was an enviable
privilege. " I would willingly," he writes to Gas-
pard Miiiler, " have I'eceived Kegel as one of my
boarders, for many reasons ; but, young Porse von
Jena being about to return soon, my table will be
full, and I cannot well dismiss my old and faithful
companions. If, however, a pl.ice shall become
vacant, which may occur after Easter, I will com-
ply with your request with pleasure, unless my lord
Catherine, which I cannot think, should refuse us
her consent." (January 19th, 1536.) He often
calls his wife, Dom'mus Ketha. He begins a letter
thus, which he wrote on the 26th July, 1540: " To
the rich and noble lady of Zeilsdorf*, Madam,
the doctort'ss Catherine Luther, residing at Wittem-
berg, sometimes taking her pleasure at Zeilsdorf,
my well-beloved spouse "...
Page 59, col. 1. "fatJier of a family." — To
Mark Cordel. — " As we have agreed upon, my dear
Mark, I send you my son John, that you may em-
ploy him in teaching children grammar and music,
and, at the same time, that you may watch over
him, and improve his manners. If your care suc-
ceeds with this one, you shall have, if I live, two
others. I am in travail with theologians. I would
also bring into the world grammarians and musi-
cians." (August 26th, 1542.)
Doctor Jonas remarked, one day, that the curse
of God on disobedient children was accom])lished
in the family of Luther, the young man of whom he
spoke being always ill and a constant sufferer.
Doctor Luther added, " It is the punishment of
his disobedience. He almost killed me at one
time, ever since which my sti'ength has utterly
failed me. Thanks to him, I now comprehend the
passage where St. Paul speaks of children who kill
their parents, not by the sword, but by disobedience.
They do not live long, and have no real happiness.
... 0 my God ! how wicked this world is, and in
what times we live ! They are the times of which
Jesus Christ has spoken: 'When the Son of man
comes, thinkest thou He will find faith and cha-
rity V Happy are they who die before such times."
(Tischreden, p. 48.)
Page 59, col. 1. "From icomen proceed children."
— " Woman is the most precious of all gifts ; she
is full of charms and virtues ; she is the guardian
of the faith.
" Our first love is violent ; it intoxicates us, and
deprives us of reason. The madness passed away,
the good retain a sober love, the ungodly retain
none.
" My gracious Lord, if it be thy holy will that I
live without a wife, sustain me against temptations ;
if otherwise, grant me a good and pious maiden,
with whom I may pass my life sweetly and calmly,
whom I may love, and of whom I may be loved in
return." (Tischreden, p. 329—331.)
Page 59, col. 2. " Take another." — Lucas Cranach,
the elder, had made a portrait of Luther's wife.
When the picture was hung up, the doctor said, on
seeing it, " I will have the portrait of a man painted.
* Zeilsdorf, the name of a village near which Luther had
a small property.
I will send both portraits to the council at Mantua,
and ask the holy fathers whether they would not
prefer the marriage state to the celibacy of the
priests."
Page 60, col. ). " We find an image of marriai^e."
" A marriage which the authorities approve of, and
which is not against the word of Gud, is a good
marriage, whatever may be the degree of consan-
guinity." (Tischreden, p. 321.)
He was loud in his blame of those lawyers who,
"against their own consciences, against natural
law, and the divine and imperial, maintained as
valid secret promises of marriage. Every one
ought to be left to settle the matter with his own
conscience : one cannot foi'ce love.
" Questions of dowi-y, nuptial presents, property,
inheritance, &c., belong to the civil power ; and I
will refer all such to it. . . . We are pastors of
consciences, not of bodies and goods." (Tischreden,
p. 315.)
Consulted in a case of adultery, he says, " You
shall summon them, and then separate them. Such
cases belong exclusively to the civil power, for
marriage is a temporal affair ; and the Church is
interested no further than the conscience is con-
cerned." (Tischreden, p. 322.)
Page 60, col. 2. " Ah ! how my heart sighed after
mineoicn!" — During the diet of Augsburg he wrote
to his son John. ..." I luiow a lovely garden,
full of children with golden robes, who wander
about, playing under the trees, having plenty of
fine apples, pears, cherries, nuts, and plums.
They sing, and frisk, and are all merriment. They
have pretty little horses, with golden bridles and
silver saddles. Passing before this garden, I asked
the o\vner who those children were. He answered,
* Those who love to pray, to learn, and who are
good.' Then I said, ' Dear friend, I, too, have
a child, little John Luther. May not he come into
this garden to eat these beautiful apples and pears,
to ride these pretty little horses, and play with
the other children V The owner answered, ' If he
is very good, and says his prayers, and attends to
his lessons, lie can come, and little Philip and
little James with him. They will find here fifes,
cymbals, and other fine instruments to play upon ;
and can dance, and shoot with little crossbows.'
As he spake thus, the owner showed me, in the
middle of the garden, a beautiful meadow for
dancing, whei'e were hung fifes, timbrels, and little
crossbows. But as it was morning, and the chil-
dren had not had their dinner, I could not wait to
see the dancing. I then said to the owner, ' Dear
sir, I shall write directly to my dear little John, to
tell him to be good, to pray, and to learn, that he,
too, may come into this gai-deu ; but he has an
aunt Madeleine, whom he dearly loves, may he
bring her with him ?' The owner replied, ' Yes ;
they may come together.' Be, then, very good,
my dear child, and tell Philip and James to be so,
too, and you shall all come together to play in this
fine garden. — I commend you to the care of God.
Give my love and a kiss for me to aunt Madeleine.
Your loving father, Martin Luther." (June 19th,
1530.)
Page 60, col. 2. " It is touching to see how each
thing that attracted his notice." — " Philip and I are
overwhelmed with business and troubles. I, who
am old and emeritits, would prefer now to take an
old man's pleasure in gardening, and in contem-
plating the wonders of God in trees, flowers, herbs,
birds, &c.; and these pleasures, and this life of
ease, would be mine, had I not deserved by my sins
to be debarred tliera by these importunate and often
useless matters." (April 8th, 1538.)
" Let us endure the difficulties which accompany
our calling with equanimity, and hope for succoui'
from Chi'ist. See an emblem of our lot in these
violets and daisies which you trample under foot,
as you walk ou your grassplots. We comfort the
people (1) when we fill the chui'ch; here we find
the robe of purple, the colour of afflictions, but in
the background the golden flower recalls the faith
which never fades.
" God knows all trades better than any one else.
As tailoi*, he makes the deer a robe which lasts
nine hundred years without tearing. As shoe-
maker, he gives him shoes which outlast himself.
And is he not a skilful cook, who cooks and ripens
evei'ything by the fire of the sun ? If our Lord
were to sell the goods which he gives, he would
turn a decent penny ; but, because he gives them
gratis, we set no store by them." (Tischr. p. 27.)
Page 61, col. 1. " The decalogue is the doctrine of
doctrines." — " I begin to undei'stand that the deca-
logue is the logic of the Gospel, and the Gospel the
rhetoric of the decalogue. Christ has all which
is of Moses, but Moses has not all which is of
Christ." (June 30th, 1530.)
Page 61, col. 2. " There ic'dl he a neic heaven and a
new earth." — " The gnashing of teeth, spoken of in
Scripture, is the last punishment which will fall on
an evil conscience, the desolating certainty of being
for ever cut off" from God." (Tischr. p. 366.) Lu-
ther would thus seem to have entertained a more
spiritual idea of hell than of paradise.
Page 61, col. 2. " Men used to go on pilgrimages to
tlie saints." — " The saints have often sinned and gone
astray. What madness to be ever setting up their
words and acts as infallible rules ! Let these insen-
sate sophists, ignorant pontiffs, impious priests, sa-
crilegious monks, and the pope with all his train
know . . . that we were not baptized in the name
of Augustin, of Bernard, of Gregory, of Peter, of
Paul, nor in the name of the beneficent theological
faculty of the Sodom (the Sorbonne) of Paris, nor i
in that of the Gomorrah of Louvain, but in the \
name of Jesus Christ, our master, alone." {De
Ahroganda Mlssa Prixata, Op. Lat. Lutheri,
Witt. ii. p. 245.)
" The true saints are all authorities, all servants
of the Church, all parents, all children who believe
in Jesus Christ, who do no sin, and who fulfil,
each in his way of life, the duties God requires
of them." (Tischreden, 134, verso.)
" The legend of St. Christopher is a fine Christian
poem. The Greeks, who were a learned, wise,
and ingenious people, have wished to set forth
by it what a Christian ought to be (Christophoros,
he who bears Christ). So with the legend of
St. George. That of St. Catherine is contrary to
all Roman history, &c."
Page 61, col. 2. " When tee read attentively the pro-
phets."— " I sweat blood and water to give the pro-
phets in the vulgar tongue. Good God! what labour!
how difficult to persuade these Jewish writers to
speak German. They will not forsake their Hebrew
for our barbarous tongue. It is as if Philomel, losing
her gracious melody, was obliged ever to sing with
the cuckoo one monotonous strain." (June 14tli,
1528.) He says, elsewhere, that whilst translating
the Bible, he would often devote several weeks to
elucidating the sense of a single word. (Ukert, ii.
p. 337.)
Page 62, col. 1. " With something from the Psa/iiis."
— From his dedication of his translation of Psalm
c.Kviii. to the abbot Frederick of Nuremberg. . . .
" This is my psalm, my chosen psalm. I love them
all; I love all holy Scripture, which is my consola-
tion and my life. But this psalm is nearest ray
heart, and I have a peculiar right to call it mine.
It has saved me from many a pressing danger,
from which nor emperor, nor kings, nor sages, nor
saints, could have saved me. It is my friend;
dearer to me than all the honours and power of the
earth. . . .
" But it may be objected, that this psalm is com-
mon to all ; no one has a right to call it his own.
Yes; but Christ is also common to all, and yet
Christ is mine. I am not jealous of my property;
I would divide it with the whole world. . . And
would to God that all men would claim the psalm
as especially theirs! It would be the most touching
quarrel, the most agreeable to God — a quaii-el of
union and perfect charity. "(Coburg, July 1st, 1530.)
Page 62, col. 2. " Of the Fathers."— At the
beginning of the year 1519, he wrote to Je-
rome Diingersheim a remarkable letter on the
importance and authority of the fathers of
the Church. " The bishop of Rome is above all
the others in dignity. It is to him that we must
address ourselves in all difficult cases and great
needs : but I allow, nevertheless, that I cannot
defend against the Greeks this supremacy that
I accoi-d to him. If I recognized the pope as the
sole source of power in the Church, I must, as a
consequence of this doctrine, treat as heretics,
Jerome, Augustm, Athanasius, Cyprian, Gregory,
and all the bishops of the east who were established
neither by him nor under him. The Council of
Nice was not called by his authority ; he did not
preside either in person or by a legate. What can
I say of the decrees of this council ? Is any one
master of them ? Can any one tell which among
them to acknowledge ? It is your custom and
Eck's to believe any one's word, and to modify
Scripture by the fathers, as if, of the two, they were
to be preferred. For myself, I feel and act quite
diff'erently; like Saint Augustin and Saint Bernard,
whilst respecting all authorities, I ascend from the
rivulets to the river that gives them birth. (Here
follow many examples of the errors into which some
of the fathers had fallen. Luther criticises them
philologically, showing that they had not understood
the Hebrew text.) How many texts does not
Jerome quote erroneously against Jovinian ? and
so Augustin against Pelagius ? Thus Augustin says
that the verse of Genesis : ' To make man in our
own image,' is a proof of the Trinity, but there is in
the Hebrew text, ' I will make man,' &e. — The
Magister Scntentiarnm has set a fatal example by
endeavouring to reconcile the opinions of the
fathers. The consequence is, that we have become
a laughing-stock to the heretics when we present
ourselves before them with these obscure phrases
and double and doubtful meanings. Eck delights
in being tlie champion of all these diverse and
contrary opinions. And it is on this that our dis-
putation will turn." (a.d. 1519.)
" I always marvel how, after the apostles, Je-
rome won the name of Doctor of the Church; and
Origen, that of Master of the Churches. Their
works would never make a single Christian. . . .
So much are they led away by tlie pomp of works.
Augustin himself would not have been a whit bet-
ter, had not the Pelagians tried him and compelled
him to defend the true faith." (August 26th, 1530.)
" He who dared to compare monkhood with
baptism was completely mad, was more a stock
than a brute. What ! and would you believe
Jerome when he speaks in so impious a way of
God? when he actually lays it down, that, next to
ourself, one's relatives should command our cares?
Would you listen to Jerome, so often in error, so
often sinful ? Would you, in short, believe in man
rather than in God himself I Go, then, and be-
lieve, if you will, with Jerome, that you ought to
break your parent's hearts in order to fly to the
desert." (Letter to Sevarinus, an Austrian monk,
October 6th, 1527.)
Page 63, col. 1. "but consider that the schoolmen
in general." — " Gregory of Rimini has convictt/d the
schoolmen of a worse doctrine than that of the Pela-
gians. . . . For although the Pelagians think we can
do a good work without grace, they do not affirm that
we can obtain heaven without grace. The school-
men speak like Pelagius when they teach that
without grace we can do a good work, and not a
meritorious work. But they out-herod the Pela-
gians when they add, that man, by inspiration of
natural reason, may subdue the will, whilst the
Pelagians allow that man is aided by the law of
God." (a.d. 1519.)
Page 65. col. 1. '• I regret not having more time to
devote." — To Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg : — " If it
would not give you too much trouble, my dear Wen-
ceslaus,I pray you to collect for me all the drawings,
books, hymns, songs of the Meistersanger, and
rhjTnes which have been written and printed in
German this year in your town. Send me as many
as you can collect; I am impatient to see them.
Here, we can write works in Latin, but as to Ger-
man books, we are but apprentices. Still, by dint
of our earnest application, I hope we may soon suc-
ceed, so as to give you satisfaction." (March 20th,
1536.)
Page 65, C(j1. 1 . " no better books than ^sop''s fables."
— In 1530, Luther translated a selection of ^sop's
fables, and in the preface he says, that most likely
there never was any man of tliat name, but that
these fables were apparently collected from the
mouths of the people. (Luth. Werke, ix. p. 455.)
Page 66, col. 1 . " Singing is the best exercise." —
Heine, Revue des deux Mondes, March 1st, 1534 : —
" Not less curious or significant than Luther's
prose writings, are his poems; those songs, which
burst forth from him in his exigencies and diffi-
culties— like the flower that struggles into exist-
ence from between the stones; a lunar x'ay shedding
light on an angry ocean. Luther loved music
passionately; he wrote a treatise on the art, and
his own compositions are sweet and melodious.
He obtained and merited the title of the swan of
Eisleben. But he was any thing but a gentle
swan in those songs of his in which he rouses the
courage of his followers, and lashes himself into a
savage ardour. The song with which (for instance)
he entered Woi-ms, followed by his companions,
was a true war-song. The old cathedral shook
again at the strange sounds, and the ravens were
disturbed in their nests on the summit of the
towers. This hymn, the Marseillaise of the Re-
formation, has preserved to this day its powerful
energy and expression, and may some day again
startle us with its sonorous and iron-girt words in
similar contests.
" Our God is a fortress,
A sword and a good armour ;
He will deliver us from all the dangers
Which now threaten us.
The old wicked serpent
Is bent on our ruin this day ;
He is armed with power and craft ;
He has not his like in the world.
" Your power will avail not,
You will soon see your ruin ;
The man of truth fights for us,
God has himself chosen him.
Seek you his name .'
'Tis Jesus Christ,
The Lord of Sabaoth ;
There is no other God but He,
He will keep his ground, He will give the victory.
" Were the world full of devils
Longing to devour us,
Let us not trouble ourselves about them;
Our undertaking will succeed.
The prince of this world.
Although he grins at us.
Will do us no harm.
He is sentenced —
One word will o'erthrow him.
" They will leave us the word.
We shall not thank them therefore:
The word is amongst us.
With its spirit and its gifts.
Let them take our bodies,
Our goods, honour, our children.
Let them go on —
They will be no gainers :
The empire will remain ours."
Page 66, col. 1. "Of Painting."— The doc-
tor was one day speaking of the talent and
skill of the Italian painters. ''They understand,"
said he, "how to imitate nature so wonderfully,
that, besides giving the colouring and form, they
express the very attitudes and sentiments to such a
degree as to make their pictures seem living things.
The Flemish painters follow in the track of Italy.
The natives of the Low Countries, and, above all,
the Flemings, are intelligent, and have an aptitude
for learning foreign languages. It is a proverb,
that if a Fleming were carried to Italy or France
in a sack, he would, nevertheless, learn the lan-
guage of the country." (Tischreden, p. 424, verso.)
Page 67, col. 1. " Of Banking." — He says
in his treatise de Usuris, — " I call usurers, those
who lend at five and six per cent. The Scrip-
tures forbid lending on interest ; we ought to
lend money as willingly as we would a vase to our
neighbours. Even civil law prohibits usury. It
is not an act of charity to exchange with any one,
and to gain by the exchange, but tliieving. A
usurer, then, is a thief worthy of the gallows. At
the present day, in Leipsic, the usual interest is
forty per cent. Pi-omises to usurers need not be
kept. They are not to be allowed to communicate,
or to be buried in holy ground. . . . Tlie last advice
that I have to give to usurers is this: — They want
money ! gold 1 Well, let them apply to Him who
will not give them ten or twenty per cent, but a
hundred for every ten ! His treasures ai'e inex-
haustible; he can give without being impoverished."
(Oper. Lat. Luth.^Witt. i. 7, P- 419-447.)
Di'. Henning proposed this question to Luther,
" If I had amassed money, and did not wish
to part with it, and were asked to lend, could I then
with a good conscience reply, I have no money ?"
" Yes," said Luther, "you might so do with a safe
conscience, for it would be the same as saying, I
have no money to spare. . . . Christ, when he bids
us give, does not mean to the prodigal and dissi-
pated. . . . Li this town, I reckon the most needy
to be the scholars. Their poverty is great, but
alas ! their laziness is greater still. . . . And must
I take the bread from the mouths of my wife and
children, to give to those whom no help benefits ?
Certainly not." (Tischreden, p. 64.)
Page 70, col. 1. " The Roman, or imperial law
otily holds by a thread."— Still Luther preferred it
to the Saxon law.
" Dr. Luther, speaking of the gi'eat barbarity
and rudeness of the Saxon law, said that things
would go on better, were the imperial law followed
throughout the empire. But it is a settled belief at
court that the change could not take place without
great confusion and mischief." (Tischreden, p. 412.)
Page 70, col. 1 . "to let the old dog sleep." — In his
last letter but one to Melanchthon, (February 6th,
1546,) he says, speaking of the legists, " 0 syco-
phants, O sophists, 0 pests of mankind ! . . . I
write to thee in wrath, but I know not that I could
indite better, were I cool."
Page 70, col. 1, last line. " Pious jurists." — He
wishes that their condition could be bettered.
" Doctors at law gain too little, and are obliged to
turn attorneys. In Italy, a jurist has four hundred
ducats, or more, yearly, whilst in Germany their
salary is only a hundred. They ought to be ensured
honourable pensions, as ought good and pious pas-
tors and preachers. For lack of this, in order to
support their families, they are obliged to apply to
agriculture and domestic cares." (Tischreden, p.
414.)
Page 71. Additions to Chapter 3. Book V. —
Confidential discussion between Luther and Me-
lanchthon. (a.d. 1536.)
Melanchthon inclined to the opinion of Saint
Augustin, who held "that we are justified by faith
and regenei'ation ;" and who, under the name of
regeneration, includes all the graces and virtues
that we derive from God*. " What is your opi-
nion V he asked of Luther; " do you hold with
Saint Augustin, that men are justified by regene-
ration V
Luther replies, " I hold so, and am certain that
the true meaning of the Gospel and of the Apostles
* Melanchthon observes, that Saint Augustin does not
express this opinion in his controversial works.
is, that we are justified before God by faith gratis ;
i. e. only by God's mere mercy, wherewith, and by
reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness to us
in Christ."
Melanchthon then inquires, " But will you not
allow me to say, Sir, that man is justified principa-
liter (principally) by faith, and viiims principaliter
(in the least measure) by works \ yet in such man-
ner that faith supplieth that which is wanting in
the law I"
Luther. — "The mercy of God is our sole justi-
fication. The righteousness of works is but external,
and can by no means deliver us from God's wrath,
and sin, and death."
Melanchthon. — " I ask touching Saint Paul,
after he was regenerated, how became he justified
and rendered acceptable to God V
Luther. — " Solely by reason of this same rege-
neration, by which he became justified by faith,
and will remain so everlastingly."
Melanchthon. — " Was he justified by God's
mercy only ? or principally by the mercy, and less
principally by his virtues and works V
Luther. — " No. His virtues and woi-ks were
only pleasing to God because they were Saint
Paul's, who was justified ; like as a work is pleasing
or displeasing, good or evil, according to the pei'son
who performs it."
Melanchthon. — " Then it seems Saint Paul was
not justified by mercy only. You yourself teach
that the righteousness of works is necessary before
God; and that Saint Paul, who had faith and who
did good works, pleased God as he svould not have
done if he had not these good works, making our
righteousness a little piece of the cause of our
justification,"
Luther. — " Not at all. Good works are necessary,
but not out of compulsion by the law, but out of the
necessity of a willing mind. The sun must needs
shine — that is a necessity ; but it is not by reason
of any law that he shines, but by his nature, by a
quality inherent and immutable. It was created to
shine. Even so one that is justified and regenerate
doeth good works not by any law or constraint,
but by an unchangeable necessity. And Saint Paul
saith, ' We are God's worhnanship, created in Christ
Jesus to good works,' ^c."
Melanchthon.- — " Sadolet accuses us of contra-
dicting ourselves, in teaching that we are justified
by faith — yet admitting the necessity of good
works."
Luther. — " It is, because the false brethren and
hypocrites make a show, as if they believed that
we require of them works, to confound them in
their knavery."
Melanchthon. — " You say Saint Paul was justi-
fied by God's mercy only ; to which I reply, that if
our obedience foUoweth not,'then are we not saved,
according to these words (1 Cor. ix.), ' Woe is unto
me, if I preach not the Gospel.'' "
Luther. — " There is no want of any thing to
add to faith. Faith is all-powerful, otherwise it is
no faith. Therefore of what value soever the
works are, the same they are through the power
of faith, which undeniably is the sun or sunbeam
of this shining."
Melanchthon. — " In Saint Augustin, works are
directly excluded in the words sola fide."
Luther. — " Whether it be so or no, Saint Au-
gustin plainly shows he is of our opinion when he
saith, ' I am afraid, but I do not despair, for I
think upon the wounds of our Saviour ;' and else-
where, in his Confessions, he saith : ' Woe be to the
life of that human creature (be it ever so good and
praiseworthy) that disregardeth God's mercy. . .' "
Melanchthon. — " Is it proper to say that right-
eousness of works is necessary to salvation ?"
Luther. — " Not in the sense that works procure
salvation, but that they are the inseparable com-
panions of the faith which justifieth, as I, of
necessity, must be present at my salvation. . . .
' I shall be there as well as you,' said the man
they were taking to be hanged, and who saw the
people running as hard as they could towards the
gallows. . . . The faith, which is the gift of God,
is the beginning of righteousness ; after that, the
works are required which are commanded by the
law, and which must be done after and besides
faith. The works are not righteousness tiiemselves
in the sight of God, although they adorn the per-
son accidentally, who doeth them ; but they justify
not the person, for we are all justified one way, in
and by Christ. To conclude, a faithful person is a
new creature, a new tree. Therefore all these
speeches used in the law are not belonging to this
case, as to say, a faithful person must do (/ood works,
the sun must shine, a (jood tree nmst bring forth
good fruit, three and seven shall be ten. For the
sun shall not shine, but it doth shine, by nature
unbidden ; likewise a good tree bringeth forth
good fruit without bidding. Three and seven are
already ten, not shall be ; there is no need to
command what is already done."
The following passage is moi'e to the purpose
still, " I use to think in this manner, as if my
heart were no quality or virtue at all, called faith
or love (as the sophists do dream of), but I set all
on Christ, and say niea formalis justitia, that is, my
sure, constant, and complete righteousness (in which
is no want nor failing, but is before God as it
ought to be) is Christ my Lord and Saviour."
(Tischreden, p. 133.)
This passage is one of those which most strongly
shows the intimate connexion of Luther's doctrine
with the system of absolute identification. It is
plain how the German philosophy ended in that of
Schelling and Hegel.
Page 71, col. 1. " good and true divinity." —
The Papists threw great ridicule on the four
new Gospels : that of Luther, who condemned
works ; that of Kuntius, who rebaptized adults ;
that of Otho de Brunfels, who regarded the
Scripture only as a purely cabalistic recitation,
surda si7ie spiritu narratio ; and finally, that of the
Mystics. (Cochlfeus, p. 165.) They might have
added that of Dr. Paulus Ricius, a Jewish doctor,
who published, during the diet at Ratisbon, a
little book in which Moses and St. Paul de-
monstrated in a dialogue how all the religious
opinions, which excited such disputes, might be
reconciled.
Page 72, col. 1. " I saw a small cloud of fire in the
air" — " I incline to think from the comet, that some
danger is threatening the emperor and Ferdinand.
It turned its tail at first towards the north, then
towards the south ; thus pointing out the two
brothers." (October, 1531.)
Page 72, col. 2. " Michael Stiefel believes himself ^
— " Michael Stiefel, with his seventh trumpet, pro-
phesies that the day of judgment will fall this yeai',
about All Saints' Day." (August 2Gth, 1533.)
Page 77, col. 1. " The detil, in truth, has not gradu-
ated."—^^ It is a wonderful thing," says Bossuet, " to
hear how solemnly and earnestly he describes his
waking with a sudden start in the middle of the
night — manifestly the work of the devil come to dis-
pute with him. The alarm which seized him ; the
sweats; the tremblings; the horrible beatings of the
heart in this combat; the pressing arguments of the
demon, leaving the mind not one instant of rest; the
tones of his powerful voice; the overwhelming man-
ner of the dispute, in which question and answer
were heard at one and the same moment. ' I now
understand,' says he, ' how sudden deaths so often
happen towards moi'uing; it is, that not only
the devil can kill and strangle men, but that he
has the power to set them so beside themselves
with these disputes, as to leave them half-dead, as
I have several times experienced.' " (De Abro-
gandii Missa Privata, t. vii. p. 222. Trad, de Bos-
suet, Variations, ii. p. 203.)
Page 80, col. 1. "At dinner, after preaching at
Smalkalde." — He wrote to his wife upon this ill-
ness, " I have been like to one dead . I recom-
mended thee and our children to God and to our
Saviour, believing that I should see you no more.
I was much moved as I thought of you ; 1 beheld
myself in the tomb. The prayers and tears of
pious people who love me, have found favour before
God. This very night I have had a favourable
crisis, and I feel a ' new man.' " (February 27th,
1537.)
Luther experienced a dangerous relapse at Wit-
temberg. Obliged to remain at Gotha, he thought
himself dying, and dictated to Bugenhagen, who
was with him, his last will. He declaimed that he
had combated papacy according to his conscience,
and asked pardon of Melanchthon, of Jonas, and
of Creuziger, for the wrongs he might have done
them. (Ukert, t. i. 325.)
Page 80, col. 1. "/ believe my true malady." —
Luther suffered early in life from stone; and was a
martyr to it. He was operated upon the 27th of
February, 1537. " By God's grace, I am getting
convalescent, and have begun to eat and drink,
though my legs, knees, and joints tremble so that
I can with difficulty support myself. I am only,
not to speak of infirmities and old age, a walking
skeleton, cold and torpid." (December 6th, 1537.)
Page 82, col. 2. " his last days were painfully em-
ployed."— He had tried in vain to reconcile the
counts of Mansfeld. "If," says he, "you would
bring into your house a tree that has been cut
down, you must not take it by the top, or the
branches will stick in the doorway ; take it by the
root, and the branches will yield to the enti'ance."
(Tischreden, p. 355.)
Page 84. — We here throw together several par-
ticulars relative to Luther.
Erasmus says of him : " His morals are unani-
mously praised ; it is the highest testimony man
can have, that his enemies even can find no flaw
in them for calumny.'' (Ukert, t. ii. p. 5.)
Luther was fond of simple pleasures. He loved
music, and would often bear his share in a friendly
concert, or play a game of skittles with his friends.
Melanchthon says of him, " Whoever has kiio\v n
him, and seen him often and familiarly, will allow
ADDITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
107
that he was a most excellent man, gentle and
agreeable in society, not in the least obstinate or
given to disputation, yet with all the gravity be-
coming his character. If he showed any great
severity in combating the enemies of the true doc-
trine, it was fi'om no malignity of nature, but from
ardour and enthusiasm for the truth." (Ukert,
t. ii. p. 12.)
" Although he was neither of small frame nor
weak constitution, he was extremely temperate in
eating and drinking. I have seen him, when in
full health, pass four days together without taking
any food, and often go a whole day with only a
little bread and a herring." i^Life of Luther, by
Melanchthon.)
Melanchthon says, in his posthumous works :
" I have myself often found him shedding bitter
tears, and praying earnestly to God for the welfare
of the Chm'ch. He devoted part of each day to
reading the Psalms, and to invoking God with all
the fervour of his soul." (Ukert, t. ii. p. 7-)
Lvither says of himself : " If I were as eloquent
and gifted as Erasmus, as good a Greek scholar as
Joachim Camerarius, as learned in Hebrew as
Forscher, and a little younger into the bargain,
ah ! what I would accomplish !" (Tischreden, p.
447.)
" Amsdorf, the licentiate, is a theologist by na-
ture ; doctors Creuziger and Jonas are so from
study and reflection. But doctor Pomer and my-
self seldom lay ourselves open in argument." (Tisch-
reden, p. 425.)
To Antoine Unruche, judge at Torgau. . . . " I
thank you with all my heart, dear Anthony, for
having taken in hand the cause of Margaret
Dorst, and for not having suffered those insolent
country squires to take from the poor woman the
little she has. Doctor Martin is, you know, not
only theologian and defender of the faith, but also
the supporter of the poor in their rights, who come
to him from all quarters, for his counsel, and inter-
vention with the authorities; he willingly aids the
poor, as you do yourself, and all who resemble you.
You are truly pious, you fear God, and love his
word; therefore Jesus Christ will not forget you,"
. . . (June 22nd, 1538.)
Luther writes to his wife on the subject of an
old servant who was about to quit their house :
" Our old John must be honourably discharged;
thou knowest that he has always served us faith-
fully, with zeal, and as became a Christian ser-
vant. How much have we not squandered on
worthless people and ungrateful students, who
have made a bad use of our money ! We must not,
therefore, be niggardly on this occasion, towards
so honest a servant, on whom whatever we lay
out will be laid out in a way pleasing to God. I
well know we are not rich; I would willingly give
him ten florins if I had them; in any case he must
not have less than five, for he is not well clothed.
Whatever more you can do for him, do it, I beg of
you. It is true that he ought also to have some-
thing out of the city chest for the various offices he
has filled in the Church ; let them do as they will.
Consider then how thou mayst raise this money;
we have a silver goblet to place in pawn. God
will not abandon us I feel sure. Adieu." (Febru-
ary 17th, 1532.)
" The prince has given me a gold ring ; but in
order that I may well understand that I was not
born to wear gold, the ring has already fallen off
my finger (for it is a little too large). I said,
' Thou art but a worm of the earth, and no man : this
gold would better have become Faber or Eck;
for thee, lead, or a cord for thy neck, would suit
thee bettei'.' " (September 15th, 1530.)
The elector on levying a tax for the war against
the Turks, had exempted Luther from it. The latter
said he accepted this mark of favour fur his two
houses, one of which (the ancient convent) it had
cost him much to keep up without bringing him in
any thing ; and for the other he had not yet
paid. " But," continues he, " I pray your elec-
toral grace, in all submission, to allow me to defray
the assessment on my other possessions. I have a
garden estimated to be worth five hundred florins,
some land valued at ninety florins, and a small
garden worth twenty. I prefer doing as the
rest, fighting the Turks with my farthings, and
not to be excluded from the army which is to
save us. There are enough already who do not
give willingly ; I would not be a cause of jealousy.
It is better to give no occasion for complaint, so
that they cannot but say, ' Dr. Martin is also obliged
to pay.' " (March 26th, 1542.)
To tlie Elector John. " Grace and peace in Jesus
Christ. Most serene highness, I have long delayed
to thank your grace for the robes you have been
pleased to send me ; I do so now with my whole
heart. Nevertheless, I humbly pray your grace,
not to believe those who represent me as in utter
destitution. I am but too rich, as my conscience
tells me ; it does not behove me as a preacher to
be in affluence ; I neither desire, nor ask it. The
repeated favours of your grace truly begin to alarm
me. I should not wish to be of those to whom the
Saviour says, 'Woe to you, ye rich, for you have
received your consolation !' Neither would I be a
burden upon your grace, whose purse must be in
constant requisition for so many importunate ob-
jects. Already had your grace amply provided
me by sending me the brown suit ; but, not to
appear ungrateful, I will also wear in honour of
your grace the black suit, although too rich for
me ; if it had not been a present from your electoral
grace, I should never have put on such a dress.
" I therefore pray your grace will have the
goodness to wait until 1 take the liberty of asking
for something. This kindness on your grace's
part will deprive me of courage to intercede for
others, who may be far more worthy of favour.
That Jesus Christ may recompense your generous
soul, is the pi-ayer that I offer up with my whole
heart. Amen." (August 17th, 1520.)
John the Constant made a present to Luther of
the ancient convent of the Augustins at Wittem-
berg. The elector Augustus bought it back of his
heirs in 1504, to give it to the university. (Ukert,
t. i. p. 347.)
Places inhabited by Luther, and objects kept in vene-
ration of his memory. — The house in which Luther
was born, no longer exists ; it was biu'nt in WiliO.
At Wartburg, they still show a stain of ink on the
wall made by Luther in throwing his inkstand at
the devil's head. The cell whicli he occupied at
the convent of Wittemberg, has also been pre-
served with the different articles of furniture
belonging to him. The walls of this cell are
covered with the names of visitors : Peter the
Great's name is to be seen written on the door.
108
THE LIFE OF LUTHER.
At Cobui'g they show the room which he occupied
during the diet of Augsburg (a. d. 1530).
Luther used to wear a gold ring, with a small
death's head in enamel, and these words, Mori
scepe coijita (Think oft of death); round the setting
was engraved, 0 mors, ero mors tua (Death, I will
be thy death). This ring is preserved at Dresden,
with the medal of silver-gilt worn by Luther's
wife. On this medal is represented a serpent raising
itself on the bodies of the Israelites, with these
words : Serpens exaltatus tijpus Christi crucifixi (The
serpent e.xalted typifies Christ crucified). The
reverse i-epi'esents Jesus Christ on the cross, with
this motto : Christus mortuus est pro peccatis nostrls
(Christ died for our sins) On the one side one
reads, D. Mart. Letter. Caterince suce dono D. H. F.
(A present from Dr. Martin Luther to his wife).
And on the other, Quce nata est anno 1499, 29
Januarii (Who was born Jan. 29th, 1499).
He had also a seal, which he has himself de-
scribed to in a letter to Lazarus Spengler: — "Grace
and peace in Jesus Christ. Dear Sir and friend, —
You tell me I shall please you by explaining the
meaning of what you see engraved upon my seal.
I proceed, therefore, to acquaint you with what I
have had engraved on it, as a symbol of my faith.
First, there is a black cross, with a heart in the
centre. This cross is to remind me that faith in
the Crucified is our salvation. Whosoever believes
in him with all his soul, is justified. The cross is
black, to signify mortification, the troubles through
which the Christian must pass. The heart, how-
ever, preserves its natural colour, for the cross
neither changes nature uor kills it ; the cross
gives life. Justus fide mvlt sed fide Crucifixi. The
heart is placed on a white rose, to indicate that
faith gives consolation, joy, and peace ; the rose is
white, not red, because it is not the joy and peace
of this world, but that of the angeHc spirits. White
is the colour of spirits and of angels. The rose is
in an azure field, to show that this joy of the spirit
and the faith is a beginning of that celestial hap-
piness which awaits us, of which we already have
the foretaste in the hope which we enjoy of it, but
the consummation of which is yet to come. In
the azure field you see a circle of pure gold, to in-
dicate that the felicity of heaven is everlasting, and
as superior to every other joy, all other good, as
gold is to all other metals. May Jesus Christ, our
Lord, be with you unto eternal life. Amen. From
my desert at Coburg, July 8th, 1530."
At Altenburg they preserved for a long time the
drinking-glass which was used by Luther the last
time he visited his friend Spalatin. (Ukert, t. i.
p. 245, et seqq.)
THE END.
London: Gilbert and Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square.
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
,BY
M. J. MICHELET,
AUTHOR OF THE " HISTORY OF FRANCE," &C.
M. E. QUINET,
AUTHOR OF " ULTRA-M0NTANI3M," &C.
TRANSLATED BY
G. H. SMITH, F.G.S.
LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE.
PREFATORY NOTICE OF THE FRENCH PUBLISHER.
The popularity attained by the present work is almost without precedent. It passed through seven
editions in the course of eight months ; and has been translated in almost every country in Europe.
Pecjiliar cii'cumstances precipitated its publication. ;
Its authors, M. Michelet and M. QAiinet, both professors in the College de France, and who are doubly
united by the ties of friendship and by conformity of opinions, had begun a course of lectures in ,
the spring of 1843, on the spirit and influence of the Religious Orders. They had concluded a course
on the Order of Knights Templars, and had commenced one on the Society of Jesus, in which tliey pro-
ceeded to treat of its constitution, its origin, of the part it has played in the past and that it is still |
playing in the world, when they were subjected to a system of violent interruption and illiberal oppo-
sition in the view of compelling them to silence, over which their firmness obtained a complete U-iumph. j
They felt their right to speak as their conscience dictated, and spoke accordingly. i
The pi'esent volume is the substance of the lectures, which have excited so fierce a polemical contest.
It is not published offensively, but defensively ; and if it has had the happy fortime to be welcomed |
by men of nearly all parties, the secret of its success has been that the cause of pubUc morality and good j
faith was at stake. i
Certain members of the clergy have, unhappily, sought to identify the cause of the Church with j
that of Jesuitism, amongst others, the archbishop of Paris ; and the question has been revived by the :
passing of the bill relative to Public Instruction. The most aspiring doctrines have been promulgated j
under the mask of liberty ; but the sound tenets advanced by MM. Michelet and Quinet, supported as |
they have been by the most eminent membera of the Chamber of Deputies, by the most distinguished \
professors of the Sorbonne, and by the most influential membei-s of the bench and of the bar, must, [
beyond a doubt, ultimately triumph.
In the short space of two years, upwards of two hundred volumes have appeared, attacking or
defending the present work. To MM. Michelet and Quinet belongs the honour of having been the first ,
to unveil the new pretensions of the Jesuits, and the base hopes of this ever insatiable order. This '
work of theirs has been the subject-matter of the important discussions which have alike agitated our I
senate and our universities ; and has been followed up by the publication of M. Quinet's work on j
" Ultra-montanism" and of M. Michelet's celebrated " PriesU, Women, and FamUks." \
CONTENTS.
M. MICHELET'S LECTURES.
Introduction..
LECTURE I.
On Modern Macliinism : on Moral Machinism
LECTURE II.
Reactions of the past. Revisitations : Perinde ac
Cadaver
PAGE
..." 1
PAGE
LECTURE III.
Education, Divine and Human. — The Education which
is contrary to nature 12
LECTURE IV.
Liberty, Fecundity. — Sterility of the Jesuits 14
LECTURE V.
Free Association, Fecundity. — Sterility of the Church
in Bondage 16
LECTURE VI.
The Spirit of Life ; the Spirit of Death 19
M. QUINET'S LECTURES.
Introduction 23
LECTURE I.
On Liberty of Discussion in Matters of Religion 25
LECTURE II.
Origin of Jesuitism; Ignatius Loyola: the Spiritual
Exercises 30
LECTURE III.
LECTURE IV.
On the Jesuit Missions 40
LECTURE V.
Political Theories: Ultra-raontanism 45
LECTURE VI.
Rules of the Order. Christian Pharisaism 35 I Philosophy of Jesuitism. — Conclusion SO
JESUITS AND JESUITISM*.
MONS. MICHELET^S LECTURES.
INTRODUCTION.
What the futui'e lias in store for us, God only
knows ! . . . My sole prayer is, that if He think
fit again to visit us, it will be with the sword. . . .
The wounds inflicted by the sword are clean,
frank wounds; they bleed and heal. But what is
to be done with those disgraceful wounds one feels
loth to disclose, which grow inveterate, and are
constantly spreading ?
Of wounds of this kind, the one most to be feared
is the introduction of the spirit of police into re-
ligious matters — the spirit of pious intrigue, of
saintly approvership, the spirit of the Jesuits.
May God be pleased to lay upon us ten times
the amount of political tyranny, of military tyranny,
of all the tyrannies, in short, we have ever suffered,
rather than this France of ours be ever defiled by
a clerical police ! . . . There is, indeed, this good
in tyranny, that it will often awaken the dormant
national feehng ; and then it either crushes or
is crushed. But this feeling extinct, and gangrene
once established in your flesh and your bones, how
be rid of it 1
Tyranny is satisfied with the outward man, with
the control of his acts. A clerical police would
attach his very thoughts.
And, by the gradual change such a police would
effect in the habits of thought, the soul, vitiated in
her essential properties, would at length degenerate
into another nature.
A lying, flattering soul, a crouching, sorry soul,
which despises itself— can we call such a thing a soul?
Change worse than death itself. .... Death
kills the body only ; but the soul gone, what re-
mains ?
When death ends you, you survive in your sons.
* The authors of these lectures were led by circumstances,
and without the slightest knowledge of each other's inten-
tion, to treat of the same subject. When they found this to
be the case, they made a division of the principal branches
into which it naturally distributed itself, and the result of
this friendly partnership is the present volume. As their
respective lectures are parts of one whole, as they are the
complement of each other and dictated by the same spirit,
it seems desirable to unite them under the same title; and,
besides, this union of their hearts and thoughts is too
precious to the writers to have allowed them to forbear from
attempting to give it a durable record.
But when this spiritual death overtakes you,
children and future are alike lost.-
Jesuitism, the spirit of police and of approver-
ship, the mean baseness of the spy pupil, once
transferred from school, college, and convent into
the community at large — how hideous the spec-
tacle ! . . . A whole nation living like a Jesuit
seminary ; that is to say, the whole community
acting the spy upon one another — treachery at
your very fireside, the wife the spy on the hus-
band, the child on the mother .... no other
sound heard than a sad murmur and rustling of
human beings confessing the sins of others, and
absorbed in mutual harassings and backbitings.
This is no mere sketch of the fancy, I have
before my eyes a whole people whom the Jesuits
are daily plunging a step lower in this hell of
everlasting corruption.
"But do you not betray France by pretending
to think that she fears such a danger ? Can you
possibly conceive that a poor thousand of Jesuits,
— for they number no more *." ....
In twelve years' time only, those thousand men
have worked a miracle. Struck down in 1830,
crushed and prostrate, they have recovered their
ground beyond all expectation. Not only have
they recovered it; but whilst men were asking one
another, " Are there any Jesuits now ? " they have
taken away from us, and that easily, our thirty or
forty thousand priests, have converted them into
their own followers, and are leading them God
knows whither !
" Are there any Jesuits now ? " Many a man
asks this question, whose wife is already theirs,
through a confessor in their interests — wife, house,
• According to an apparently accurate estimate there are
at this moment (1843) upwards of nine hundred and sixty
Jesuits in France. At the epoch of the Three Days, there
were only four hundred and twenty-three, and they were
then concentrated in a few houses, whilst they are now
scattered over every diocese. They are busied in every
, direction. Three have just gone to Algiers ; several to
Russia; and they have got Mexico and New Grenada to
petition the pope to send thither some members of the
society of Jesuits. Masters of the Valais, they have just
contrived to get possession of Lucerne as well, and of the
smal ler cantons, &c.
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
table, fireside, bed .... and, in a trice, liis child
will be theirs *.
*A.nd where, then, are the clergy of France ?
Where are all those parties which were the life
of our Galilean church at the Restoration ? Ex-
tinct, dead, annihilated.
What has become of the small Jansenist party,
small, but full of energy ? I look aroimd, and see
only the grave of Lanjuiuais.
Where is M. de Montlosier ? Where are our
loyal Galileans who desired a cordial agreement
between church and state ? They have dis-
appeared. They have most likely thought it need-
ful to desert the state, which was deserting them.
Who would dare uow-a-days in France to call
himself GalHcan, or protest in the name of the
church of France ?
The timid Sulpician opposition (hardly Galilean,
however, and which held the Four Articles but
cheap) died with M. Frayssinous.
St. Sulpice has confined herself to education for
the priesthood, and to her scholastic duties, leaving
the world to the Jesuits. Indeed, this seminary
seems to have been created for their special delight.
So long as the priest is brought up there, they have
nothing to fear. What can they desire more than
a school which neither teaches nor will suffer to be
taught t I The Jesuits and St. Sulpice are on most
excellent terms ; the compact has been silently
struck between death and the void.
One can know little more of what is done in
these seminaries, hedged in as they are against
interference from the authorities, than from the
nothingness of their results. Their text-books,
indeed, are patent; superannuated works, considered
by all the rest of the world as rubbish, and which
are still forced down our unhappy young priests J.
How can one be surprised, then, at their quitting
the seminary as ignorant of science and letters as of
the world ? The first step they take in it, they
feel that they are utterly without the helps they
need, and the most prudent keep their mouths shut.
Whenever an opportunity off'ei's, the Jesuit or the
Jesuit's missionary presents himself, and mounts
the pulpit ; the priest keeps in the background.
And yet he is neither deficient in natural talent
• Once for all, I beg it to be understood, notwithstanding
the reiterated charges of the Jesuits, charges which they
know to be false, that the question of liberty of instruction,
and of what they call the university monopoly, is altogether
foreign from the present subject, and that not a word
relative to it will be found in this volume. I have some
very dear friends in the university; but, since 1838, I have
ceased to belong to it.
t The archbishop of Paris has solicited the teachers of
St. Sulpice, but without effect, to allow their pupils to
attend the course of lectures given by the faculty of
theology.
t To the great danger of their morality. My wonder is
that these young priests, trained in such a casuistical
fashion, preserve any decent and upright feelings. " But
don't you see," said a bishop, " that it is a medical work ?"
. . . Yes, but there are medical works which, under pre-
tence of treating of such or such a disease, now unknown
(or even imaginary and physically impossible), defile both
patient and physician. The cynical assurance with which
all this is defended, shows ttie necessity of throwing open
these seminaries, now hermetically closed, and where no
one knows what goes on, to public supervision. Nay, some
convents have been absolutely converted into houses of
correction.
nor in heart. . . . The fault is not theirs. All is
against them.
Of this they are but too conscious; and the very
consciousness contributes to depress and sink them
below themselves. Disliked by the world, ill-
treated by his own order, the parish priest (look at
him walking in the street) creops sadly along, with
a more than modest, with a timid air, and ever
giving the wall !
But would you see a man ? Look at that Jesuit.
A man, do I say ? many men in one ! His voice
is low, but his step firm. His very gait says,
without his putting it in words, " I am legion."
Courage is easy for him who feels a whole army at
his back ; who knows that he can turn for support
to the great body of Jesuits, and to a whole world
of titled folk and of beauteous ladies, who, if need
be, will move heaven and earth for him.
He has taken a vow of obedience — to reign, to be
pope with the pope, to have his share in the grand
kingdom of the Jesuits, diffused over all kingdoms,
and whose interests he follows up by a close and
active correspondence, from Belgium into Italy,
and from Bavaria into S.avoy. The Jesuit's home
is Europe. Yesterday at Fribourg, he will be to-
morrow at Paris. The priest's home is his parish,
and the small dark street running along the church
wall. He may be but too well compared to the poor
sickly gillyflower which he rears on his window-
sill.
Let us look at these two men at their work. . . .
And, first, let us watch which way that female,
who seems engrossed by thought and care, who
is just entering the square in front, and who seems
altogether undecided, will turn. . . . The left
hand will take her to the priest's, the right to the
Jesuit seminary.
On the one hand, what will she find ? An honest
man ; and, under that stiff", ungainly form, a man
of heart, perhaps, who has been labouring his whole
life to stifle his passions ; in other words, to acquire
complete ignorance of the very matters on which
he will be sure to be consulted. The Jesuit, on the
contrary, is well prepared on all such subjects ; can
adduce precedents ; easily point out the venial and
extenuating side ; and can arrange the whole God-
ward, and, sometimes, irorld-ward.
The priest bi-ings with him the Law and the De-
calogue, like a weight of lead. He is slow, full of
objections and difficulties. You tell him of your
scruples, and his own mind suggests more. You
think yourself in a bad state, and he finds you to be
in a worse. Here is a dilemma ; but 'tis your own
fault. Why do you not go to that Italian chapel,
tricked out, and all-allui-ing as it is ? Though it be
dimly lighted, fear not ; go in, and yon will soon be
reassured and comforted. . . . Your case of con-
science is a very simple matter ; you will find a
clear-headed man there, who will prove this to you
beyond a shadow of doubt. What was it you said
about the Law ? The Law may be the rule in the
parish church, but here reigns Grace ; here is the
Sacrt Cceur * of Jesus and of Mary. . . . The
kind Virgin is so kind f !
• (The "Sacred Heart;" the representation of a heart on
a cross, commemorative of the Atonement, which, blessed
by the priest, is a common ornament of churches and
of private houses in Catholic countries.) — Translator.
t The Jesuit is not confessor only, he is director, (spiritual
director 1) and, in this capacity, is consulted on all matters.
INTRODUCTION.
There is another grand distinction betwixt these
two men. The priest is tied down, in many re-
spects, by his church, by the local authorities ; he
is under control, — a minor, as it were. The priest
stands in awe of the rector {mre), and the rector of
the bishop. The Jesuit stands in awe of no one.
All his order asks fi"om him, is the advancement of
his order. The bishop has no authority over him.
And, indeed, what bishop would, now-a-days, be
bold enough to doubt the Jesuit's being himself
the rule and the law?
So far from being in the way, the bishop is a
great help. He gives the hold on the priests. His
staff is stretched out over them ; and, managed by a
young vicar-general, who aspires to be bishop, that
staff becomes a rod of iron. . . .
Beware, then, priest ! Woe to thee if thou
budgest. . . . Preach seldom; write not at all.
Shouldst thou write a line ! . . . Suspension, in-
terdict, would follow, without inquiry or explana-
tion. Have the imprudence to ask to be allowed
to explain, and the answer will be, " 'Tis a question
of morals. . . .* " As well would it be for the
priest to be drowned, a stone round his neck !
It is said that there are no longer any serfs in
France. . . . Why, there are forty thousand. . . I
advise them to be silent, to swallow their tears,
and to try to smile.
Many would only be too glad to be silent, and
to vegetate in a corner. . . . But they are not
allowed to escape so. They must speak, and bite ;
and, from their pulpit, must damn Bossuet.
I have known some compelled to get off by rote
and fulminate a sermon against a living author
whom they had never read. . . . Set on, as dogs
are set on at the astonished passer by, who is all
at a loss for tlie cause. . . .
Wretched, anti-Christian, anti-human position !
. . . They wlio force them into it, laugh. . But they
whom they attack and believe to be their enemies,
can only weep.
Stop at random any one in the street, and ask
him, " What are the Jesuits ?" He will reply at
once, and unhesitatingly, " The counter-Revolution."
This is the firm belief of the people, from
which they have never vai'ied, and which you
cannot change.
If any have been surprised when they heard
this term used in the College de France, the reason
may be that we have lost its true sense in our
superabundance of intellect.
Ye great intellects, who would blush to attend
to the voice of the people, list to that of know-
ledge— search, study — and, after you have spent
ten years in studying the history and writings of
the Jesuits, I will take upon me to say that you
will attach but one meaning to the whole — The
Death of Liberty.
In this capacity, too, he hy no means conceives himself
bound to secresy ; so that twenty directors who live
together can bring into one common stock, examine, com-
pare, and combine the thousands of souls which are laid
open to them, and through which they look as if trans-
parent, from one side to the other {de part en part). ... In
conclaves of this kind, marriages, wills, and all the aflfairs
of their penitents of both sexes, can be discussed and
arranged.
* (That is, the priest will be told that he is suspended, not
because he has published, but on account of immoralities
which have come to his superior's knowledge.) — Trans-
The day that this expression was first uttered,
the whole pi-ess (a harmony unknown before)
welcomed it without a dissentient voice ; and,
wherever the press reached, it found an echo,
down to the humblest ranks of the community.
For answer, they bethought themselves of the
strange reply, " We do not exist." . . . They
made a boast of their numbers in April ; and,
in June, would fain hide themselves.
And what is the good of denial 1 No one will
be taken in by words. Call out Liberty! as you
list ; give yourself out as of this or that party ;
'tis no matter to us. If your heart be Jesuit, go
on ; that is the road to Fribourg. If you are
frank and above-board, hither ; this is I'rance !
Looking at the decay of parties and the approxi-
mation, from motives more or less disinterested,
now taking place between many men who enter-
tain opposite opinions, it would seem as if thei'e
would presently be only two parties left, as there
are only two spirits — The spirit of Life and the
spirit of Death.
This is a far graver and more dangerous situa-
tion than any in which the country has stood
of late years, notwithstanding immediate shocks
are less to be apprehended from it. Though what
if the spirit of death, having triumphed over
religion, should spread to politics, literature, and
art, should seize on all that there is of life in the
body politic ?
Be it our hope that the progress of the men of
death will be stayed. . . . Light has pierced into
the sepulchre. . . . We know, and shall soon
know better still, how these spectres have walked
in the night. . . .
How, whilst we slept, they stole with wolf-like
prowl, and surprised the defenceless, surprised
priests, and women, and nunneries.
The number of worthy, excellent people, meek
brothers, chaintable sisters, who have been thus
cozened, is beyond all conception. . . . How many
convents have opened their doors to them, de-
ceived by their hypocritical whine ; where, now,
they speak in authoritative tone, and whose in-
mates, in their fear, smile, whilst they tremble,
and do whatever they are ordered.
Show me, if you can, any wealthy charity (une
ceuvre riche) where they do not possess the chief
influence, where they do not have everything given
as they wish, and to whom they wish. And, as a
corollary, every poor corporation (missionary,
picpus, Lazarists, Benedictines even) have gone
to take the word of command from them : so that
now the whole forms, as it were, a great army,
which the Jesuits are bravely leading on to the
conquest of the world.
Astonishing, that in so short a space of time
such a body of forces should have been got
together ! However great our belief in the ability
of the Jesuits, that is not enough to account for so
great a result. A mysterious hand has plainly
been at work ... the hand which, skilfully guided,
has, from the first day the world ever saw,
pliantly worked the miracles of cunning, weak, but
resistless— woman's hand. The Jesuits have em-
ployed the instrument of which St. Jerome speaks
— " Poor little women, all covered with sins !"
We show an apple to a child to entice him to
come over to us. Well ; our women have been
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
shown graceful little acts of feminine devotion,
holy playthings invented yesterday — a little world
of idol worsliip has been got up for them. . . How
would St. Louis cross and bless himself, could he
return and see ! He would not stay two days.
He would prefer going back to his captivity among
the Saracens.
These new fashions were essential to the gaining
over of the women. Whoever wishes to catch
them must fall in with their little weaknesses, their
little manoeuvres, and often, too, with their passion
for stratagem. What made the fortune of the
Jesuits with some of them, especially at the begin-
ning, was nothing more nor less than the necessity
for deceit and mystery — the feigned name, the
half-known abode, the clandestine visits, the pi-
quant call on the brain for fresh excuses and pre-
texts as to where they had been, when they returned
home
A woman who has felt much, and who at last
comes to find the world one dreary blank, will gladly
welcome a stimulus in the contrast of the most op-
posite ideas. I remember seeing a picture at
Venice, representing on a rich but sombre piece of
tapestry a beautiful rose, drooping close to a human
skull in which wreathed and sported a spotted
snake.
This is the exception. The simple and natural
plan, and which is usually successful, is to catch
the wild birds by means of tame ones. I allude to
the Jesuitesses*, insinuating, gentle, subtle, and
fascinating, who, pouring oil and honey as they go,
smooth the road for the Jesuits; and who ravish
the hearts of women by becoming their sisters,
friends, taking any shape they require, especially
adopting the maternal one, and so touching that
sensitive point, the mother's heart. . . .
For friendship's sake, they will take charge of
the daughter ; and the mother, who, otherwise,
would never have parted with her, freely entrusts
her to such gentle hands And she soon
finds herself released from a restraint ; for, after
all, the dear child was sometimes embarrassingly in
the way; especially when the mother, feeling herself
daily less young, might be painfully reminded of
the fact by seeing blooming by her side the dear,
adored, but too dazzling flower.
All this has been done with exquisite tact and
promptitude, and with admirable secresy and dis-
cretion. The Jesuits are not far from having in
the houses of their sisters the daughters of all the
most influential families in the country ; a circum-
stance pregnant with results Only, they
should have learnt the art of waiting. In a few
years, these little girls will be women, mothers. . .
Whoever secures the women, will be sure in the
long run to have the men.
One generation would have sufficed. Those mo-
thers would have given their sons. The Jesuits
have not had patience. Their heads have been
* The ladies of the order of the Sacre-Cosur are not only
directed and governed by the Jesuits, but, since 1823, have
had the same rules ; and the pecuniary interests of these
two branches of the Society of Jesus must be in common
up to a certain point, since, when the Jesuits returned
after tlie Revolution of July, they received assistance from
the funds of the order of the Sacre-Cceur. Loyola's rule,
tliat the Jesuits were to have nothing to do with the
direction of female orders, has been expressly revoked.
turned with a few triumphs in the pulpit and in the
fasliionable cii'cles ; and they have forgotten those
prudent means of approach which were the secret
of their success. The skilful miners who worked
so well under ground, have taken to working in the
face of day. The mole has quitted its subterranean
track to aff'ront the sun.
So difficult is it to stand aloof from the bustle of
the day, that the vei'y men who had most to fear
from making a noise, have themselves begun to
raise their voices.
Ha ! you are there . . . thanks, endless thanks
for having awakened us ! . . . But, what do you
want ?
" We have your daughters, we want your sons ;
in the name of liberty, give up your children." . . .
Liberty ! so dearly did they love her, that in their
zeal they wanted to begin by stifling her voice in
the higher departments of instruction. ... A
happy presage of what their conduct would be in
the more elementary ! . . . Early in the year
1842, they commissioned their young saints to dis-
turb the courses of lectures that were being given
in the College de France.
We boi'e these attacks with patience ; but what
we could not so easily resign ourselves to was the
bold attacks made before our very eyes to coiTupt
the schools.
Here, they no longer observed precaution or mys-
tery, but worked in the open day, and began tam-
pering in the very streets. Excessive competition
and the uneasiness attendant upon it* aff"orded them
an easy game. . . . This or that sudden advent
to fortune spoke with tinimpet-tongue ; miracles of
the new Church, powerful to touch the heart. . . .
And some, even of the firmest, began to reflect ;
they saw how silly poverty looked, and hung their
beads. . . .
Once shaken, no breathing-time was allowed.
The game was played briskly, and more openly
every day. The gradual stages heretofore observed
were by degrees disused. The neo-catholic proba-
tionary stage was rapidly abridged. The Jesuits
only asked a day for a complete conversion. Adej)ts
were no longer x'equired to plod through the ancient
preliminaries f; but the goal was boldly shown at
once. . . . This seemingly imprudent haste admits,
however, of explanation. These young folks are
not so young as to allow of the risk of waiting.
They have one foot on the threshold of manly life,
and are either already their own masters or about
to become so. There is no time to be lost ; the
result is close at hand. Gained over to-day, to-
morrow they will deliver up the whole community;
as physicians can betray the seci'ets of families,
attorneys those of fortunes, and as the bench the
rights of justice.
Few have succumbed. . . Our schools have held
out ; the national good sense and honour have
saved them. We congratulate them therefore. . .
Young men, may you remain true to yourselves,
and repulse corruption as you have hitherto done,
when religious intrigue called it in as an auxiliary,
* The depression of spirits, consequent upon such re-
peated political disappointments, would have brought about
a serious return to religious ideas, had not the speculators
in religion been too eager to take advantage of this position
of affairs.
t As Christian art, Catholic demagogy, &c.
INTRODUCTION.
and assailed you even on those benclies, with the
seducing array of worldly temptations.
No danger greater — he who runs blindly after
the world and its pleasures, through youthful pas-
sion, will come back to himself through disgust and
lassitude: . . . but he who coolly, and in order to
take the world by surprise, has once made his God
a subject of speculation, who has calculated how
much God will bring in, has died the death from
which no one has ever returned to life.
There was no upright man but felt saddened at
seeing capitulations of the kind, and the hope of his
country thus compromised. How much more
acutely then did they feel this, who live surrounded
by these young men, and who consider themselves
their parents as well as teachers.
And, among their teachers, he who cannot but
have been the most sensitive on the point, if I may
be allowed to make so frank a declaration, was
myself.
Why ? Because I had thrown into my teaching
what no man living had ever displayed in a similar
degree. I speak not of talent or of eloquence,
when, were either in question, the names of friends
of mine, my fellow-professors, would start to every
lip. I cannot allude to leai-ning, when within the
same college is that oracle from whom the East
comes to seek her forgotten tongues.
I refer to one only thing, imprudent, perhaps,
but of which I never can repent — my unlimited
confidence in my youthful pupils, my faith in the
unknown friends I am sure to find there. , . It is
this imprudence, and nothing else, which has been
the life-blood of my teaching, and which renders
it more fertile as regards the future than that of
others, however superior.
Though installed in this chair, at a somewhat
late period, and after having been long before the
public, I, nevertheless, went on studying along
with you all. Others taught the brilliant results at
which they had arrived ; I taught my studies
themselves, my method and means. I walked in
front of all, so that they could follow me, and see
both my goal and the humble road along which I
had made my way.
We pursued our inquiries in common. I made
them my partners, frankly and unreservedly, in the
great business of my existence; and we all followed
it up with that eager interest which is felt in mat-
ters personal to oneself. ... No vain glorification,
nothing for paltry display ; 'twas too serious a
business. We were mquiring for life, as much as
for knowledge ; for the remedy of the soul, to use the
expression of the middle age. And this remedy we
sought from philosophy, and from history, from
the voice of the heart and the voice of the world.
The form, the occasionally poetic form in which
these researches were cast, might arrest the weak ;
but the strong easily detected the critical under
the poetic — not that criticism which destroys, but
that which produces*, that living criticism which
asks from everything the secret of its birth, its
creative idea, its cause and its reason of being ; the
which being discovered, science can re-create the
whole. . . This is the height of true science, to be
art and creation, to be ever re-creating, to disbe-
• I need hardly say that I allude to the tendency and the
method of my teaching rather than to the results obtained.
lieve in death, never to abandon what has once
had life, but to reconstruct and replace it in that
life which does not pass away.
What is needed for this ? Above all, to love ;
to throw one's heart and life into one's pursuit.
I loved the object of my studies. I loved that
past, which I called again to life ; and the present
too, these companions of my studies, this throng of
youth, who, long accustomed to hear me speak,
comprehended, divined, and often, indeed, gave me
new lights by the rapidity with which they would
outstrip my train of reasoning.
I wanted no other society, for long years, than
this sympathetic auditory ; and, it may surprise
many, perhaps, to hear that I sought solace there
in those grave moments when men feel the need
of seeking a friend. I have gone and seated my-
self amongst them on the most mournful days of
my life.
Great and rare confidence ; but still, not blind
instinct ! It was founded in reason. I had a right
to believe that there could not be a single man of
sense among my hearers my enemy. The friend
of the past and of the present, I felt within myself
the two pi'inciples, by no means opposites, which
divide the world, and I made each lend the other
life. Born of the Revolution, of liberty, which is
my faith, I have, nevertheless, yearned tenderly
over the middle age. The most filial sentiments
which were, perhaps, ever uttered of our aged
mother Church, have fallen from my lips. . . Com-
pare them with the unfeeling tone of her showy
defenders, . . Whence did I draw these living
waters? Fi'om those springs common to all,
where the middle age drank, and where the
modern age slakes its thirst — from the springs of
free thought.
To give in a few words my notion of the con-
nexion between the two principles: — "History
(I laid down this definition in 1830, and I abide
by it) is the progressive victory of liberty. This
progression must be eff'ected, not by obstruction,
but by interpretation. Interpretation supposes
the tradition which is interpreted, and the liberty
which intei'prets. . . . Let others choose between
the two ; for my own part, I must have both ; I
want each. . . . How can they be otherwise than
dear to me ? Tradition is my mother ; liberty is
myself."
No teaching has been more vivified than my
own, by the freedom of Christian thought which
constituted the life of the middle age. Wholly
busied with causes, and seeking these in the soul
only (the soul, divine and human), it was spii-itual-
ised in the highest degree, the teaching of the
mind.
Hence the wings which bore it up and enabled
it to surmount many a rock, against vvhich others
had been wrecked.
To instance one subject only — Gothic art.
The fii'St who paid attention to it, and who was
not Christian, and who could see nothing Christian
in it, the great worshipper of nature {naturaliste),
Goethe, admired in those endless repetitions of
the same forms, a lifeless imitation of nature, "a
colossal crystallisation."
One of our own countrymen, a mighty poet,
imbued with a less noble perception, but more
instinct with life, felt these stones to be living,
only he betook himself to the grotesque and
fanciful ; that is to say, in God's house, the first
thing he saw was the devil *.
Both lool^ed at the external rather than the in-
ternal, at the effect rather than the cause.
I started from the cause, mastered it, and, en-
dowing it with life, marked the result. 1 did not
look at the church as a subject of contemplation,
but as a work to be wrought ; 1 did not take it as
it stood built before me, but I rebuilt it Of
what ? Of the very element of which it was first
built — of man's blood and heart, of the free move-
ments of the soul which piled up those stones; and,
beneath those masses whose authority bears most
imperiously upon us, I pointed out a something
more ancient and more living still, which created
authority herself, I mean liberty.
This word, liberty, is the great and the true
right of the middle age ; and, be it remembered,
that to discover and to prove this right of hers,
was making her peace with modern times.
I have introduced the same course of research,
have brought the same absorbing appreciation of
moral causes, of the free genius of the human
mind {du llbre genie Immain) into the study of
literature, of law, of all the forms of active life.
The deeper I dug by study, by erudition, by chro-
nicles and charters, the moi-e I recognized in the
depth of things, as their first organic principle-
feeling and idea, the heart of man, my heart.
So invmcible has this spiritualizing tendency
been in me, that I have remained faithful to it in
the history of those material epochs which ma-
terialized a considerable number of our contem-
poraries. I allude to the troubled and sensual
epochs which terminate the middle age, and form
the commencement of modern times.
In the fourteenth century, what is it that I have
analyzed, developed, and brought into full relief,
at the expense of all the rest ? The grand religious
question, that of the Temple.
In the fifteenth, in Cliarles Vlth's time, the
gi-and moral question : — " How, from ignorance
to error, from false ideas to bad passions, from
drunkenness to phrenzy, man loses his nature as
man f ." .... Then, having shown how France
was lost by a madman, I show how she was
saved by the heroic and holy madness of the Maid
of Orleans J.
The appreciation of moral life, which alone can
reveal causes, enabled me in my publications and
my lectures, to throw a steady light upon the
times of the Revival (Renaissance). The vertigo
of those times did not turn my head ; their phan-
tasmagoria did not dazzle me; the fitful but bril-
liant fairy could not change me as she did so many
others, and all in vain did she dance befoi'e my
eyes her many-coloured iris Others saw
there costumes, blazons, banners, cui-ious weapons.
* (See p. 275, ch. 9, book iv., on " the Passion, as the
Principle of Art in tlie Middleajje," in Miclielet's History of
France, published in Whittaker's Popular Library.) — Trans-
lator.
t Michelet's History of France, vol. ii. p. 3, in Whittaker's
Popular Library.
I When treating of Charles VI., I am considered a
materialist; when treating of the Pucelle, they consider me
a spiritualist. Poor critics, who judge by the nature of the
subject, not by the method of treatment, which is the same
in both cases.
armorial bearings, cofi'ers, vases. ... 1 saw only
the soul.
I thus equally steered clear of our picturesque
historians, with their vain exhibition of waxen
figures, which they cannot put in motion ; and
of those restless drama-mongers who, seizing a
limb here and a limb there, confound and gal-
vanize the whole to the gi'eat alarm of the spec-
tators All this is external : 'tis death, or
pretended life.
What is true historic life ? and how can the
sincere man, who compares the world and his
heart, find it, and re-create it ? Tliis was the
high and difficult question which I laid down for
examination in my later courses of lectures*; and
the successive efforts of those to come after me
will gradually throw more light upon it.
The fruit of my toil, the reward of a laborious
life, would be to have established the true nature
of the problem, and so, perhaps, to have prepared
the way for its solution. Every one must see the
immensity of the speculative and the gravity of the
practical results that would follow, both in politics
and education.
Never have I been impi*essed with a more pro-
found religious sentiment of my mission, than
during my teaching these two last years ; never
have I more thoroughly compi-ehended the priest-
hood, the pontificate of history. I bore the whole
past as reverentially as I would have borne the
ashes of my father or of my son.
'Twas in the midst of this religious labour that
insult came to single me out. . . . +
The first attack took place a year since (April
7th, 1842), after an impoi'tant lecture, in wliich I
maintained, in opposition to the sophists, the moral
unity of mankind.
Word was given to assail me, and interrupt my
lectures. But the indignation of the public alarmed
these valiant men. Hardly organized as yet, they
thought it better to wait for the irresistible eff'ect
sure to be produced by the libel which the Jesuit
D. wrote from the notes of his brothers, and to
which M. Desgarets, canon of Lyons, put his name,
although disavowing the authorship.
I am not fond of disputation. For a whole year
I fell back upon the darling subject of my thoughts,
upon my solitary toil, upon my dream of the
olden time. . . . My adversaries, who did not
sleep, took heart, and believed they could steal
behind the dreamer and stab him with impunity.
It happened, however, that the natural order
of my lectures led me to them. Occupied pre-
viously in explaining and analyzing life, I had to
show its opposite, counterfeit life ; with the living
organism I had to contrast sterile machinism.
And though I might have explained life without
exhibiting death, I considered it my duty, as pro-
fessor of moral philosophy, not to avoid the ques-
tion which rose in my path.
Our preachers of the day have handled every-
thing ; no question, social, political, historical, lite-
rary, medical, has come amiss. One has treated
of anatomy, another of Waterloo. Then, as their
* And to which I intend to devote a specific work.
t No interruption had been aitempted to the lectures of
any other professor. The disturbances at the Sorbonne did
not take place till a month or two afterwards.
MORAL MACHINISM.
courage grew, they have begun to preach, as in
the days of the League, against this or that indivi-
dual. And the novelty has been relished.
Who cares for individuals ? . . . And, as re-
gards social questions, no doubt it has been taken
for granted, that in this lethargic time there was no
great danger from their being discussed in the
pulpit.
Of a certainty, I am not the man to contradict
this, and I accept the transfer. The Church busies
herself with the world, and teaches us our business.
We 1, we will teach her God !
May God deign to shed his light on iinowlcdge.
How has her "ample page " done so long without ?
. . . Return to us, O Lord, unworthy as we ai-c.
. . . Ah! how joyfully should we hail thy presence.
Art thou not our lawful inheritance ? As long
as knowledge was estranged from thee, could she
be termed knowledge ? . . . This has been a
happy means of her drawing nigh unto thee, and,
at the same time, of re-discovering her perfect
accord with the good sense of the people, from
whom she ought never to have wandered.
June 26th, 1843.
LECTURE THE FIRST*.
MODERN MACHINISM f.— ON MORAL MACHINISM.
In this first lecture, I laid down an important
fact, — namely, that since 1834, whilst there has
been an immense increase in material productive-
ness, intellectual productiveness has seriously dimi-
nished.
This fact, which has almost escaped notice
amongst ourselves, is well known to our foreign
imitators, who complain that we give them hardly
anything to imitate.
From 1824 to 1834, they were liberally supplied
by France. In this period, she produced those
literary monuments of her's which are her glory
in the eyes of Europe ; not isolated monuments
merely, but grand connected works, whole cycles
of histories, dramas, romances, &c.
In the ten following years, the press has been
equally active, or more so ; but the works pub-
lished have been unimportant. And even works of
some extent have made their first appearance in a
fragmentary form, cut up into articles and feuUle-
tonsX; ingenious and brilliant, indeed, but still
fragmentary, and presenting little continuity of
thought, and few of the characteristics of a grand
whole.
The greater number of the works published
within this period have been reprints, manusci'ipts,
and other historical documents, and cheap illustra-
ted works — a sort of daguerrotypes which reflect in
pale images all that is put befoi-e them.
The singular rapidity with which all these things
are issued, one succeeding the other so as to leave
hardly a trace, does not allow us to remark, that of
• Delivered April 27th, 1843. These lectures are sub-
stantially the notes from which I lectured ; and I give
them as they were jotted down, or nearly so, day by day.
I was obliged to write them in this hurried manner, accord-
ing to the change of circumstances and the different aspect
the question assumed through the interference of the public
press, or otherwise, up to the last day of the course.
I may reasonably expect some indulgence for an argu-
ment carried on through the pelting of the storm, and
which, notwithstanding the modifications rendered hourly
necessary by the alternations of the dispute, proceeded
straight to the end laid down from the first.
t (A word introduced by M. Miehelet, and a very ex-
pressive one.)
t (Ihe feuilleton is that part of a French newspaper de-
voted to tales, essays, or novels, which are published piece-
meal from day to day, or week to week.)— Translator.
these thousand passing objects the form is but little
varied.
An attentive observer, curious in comparing his
recollections, would find that these pretended novel-
ties come round periodically ; and he would have
little trouble in referring them to a small number
of types and formulas which are employed, turn by
turn. To these formulas cur rapid improvisatorl
are, in their hurry, obliged to have recourse ; they
form, as it were, a large instrument on which our
writers play with a light touch.
The mechanical genius which has enlarged and
simplified modern life in material respects, cannot
be applied to mental things otherwise than injuri-
ously. I see, in all pursuits, intellectual machines
which relieve us from the necessity of study and
meditation* ; dictionaries which enable us to skim
every science, apart from its congeners, and from
the corresponding sciences which serve to throw
light upon it ; encyclopedias, in which ev«ry science,
labelled in small packets, is so much barren dust;
summaries, which give you the result of that
which you have not learnt, trick you into fancying
yourself master of the subject, and bar the door
against knowledge.
Antiquated methods, these, and far inferior to
the notion of Raymond Lully. At the close of the
middle age, he found the schoolmen exhausting
themselves in drawing consequences from es-
tablished theorems. " If," he said, " the theorem
be fully made out, if philosophy, religion, science,
be grounded on a firm basis, all that we want is to
systematize : from principles to consequences the
deductions will follow of themselves. My system
shall resemble a tree ; you shall trace from the
roots to the branches, from the branches to the
leaves, proceeding from the general to the species,
to the individual, and thence, inversely, you shall
trace back to the deep roots of general principles."
• . . He wrought out his plan ; and with this con-
venient tree of his, there was no longer any need of
exploring ; all became easy. , . . Only, the tree
was a withered tree, and never bore fruit or flowers.
Another, and a bolder attempt at Machinlsm, was
essayed in the sixteenth century. The world was
* The objection is to works of this kind in general, and
not to specific works of similar form, in which the writers
have displayed profound and original genius.
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
in arms for religion. A brave man, Ignatius Loy-
ola, looked upon religion itself as a warlike ma-
chine, and on morality as capable of mechanical
regulation. His celebrated Exercises constitute a
manual of religious tactics, by which the monastic
militia are drilled into certain movements. He
sets down material means of pi'oducing those im-
pulses of the heart, which had ever been left to un-
fettered inspiration. In such an hour you pray,
then meditate, then weep, &c.
Admii'able mechanism, in which man is reduced
to a piece of clockwork that can be wound up at
will ! Only, ask nothing from him more than a
machine can produce. The I'everse of animated
organism, a machine imparts action, but yields no
living production ; whereas the first not only im-
parts action, but produces animated and organic
nature, resembling itself. The mechanism of the
Jesuits has been active and powerful, but has pro-
duced no living thing : it has failed to elicit that
which, in all communities, is the highest proof of
life; it can show no great man. ... In three hun-
dred years, not one man !
What is the Jesuit's nature ? He has none. He
is equally ready for all things. He is a machine,
a mere instrument to be put in motion, without any
individual will.
The machine has its law — fatality; just as liberty
is the law of the soul. How then can the Jesuits
speak of liberty ? What have they to do with her ?
Observe the equivocating language they now hold.
In the morning, they are for liberty ; in the even-
ing, for authority.
In their newspapers, which they distribute among
the people, they speak only of liberty, and seek to
persuade them that political liberty can exist with
religious tyranny. . . . This is hard to believe, and
difficult to make those believe who, in order to ex-
pel them, but yesterday expelled a dynasty* {cheers
and disapprobation) — and who, if needs be, will
expel ten dynasties.
Many alter their tone in the higher circles, and
to the noble ladies whose spiritual directors they
are. Here, they become all at once the lovers of
the past, the true children of the middle-age.
I, too, I can boldly tell them, am in some sort
of the middle-age, for in it I have lived long
years, and I distinctly recognise the four words of
Christian art which our friends have just taught
you. . . but, allow me to look you in the face ; if
you be truly the children of that day, you will
resemble it.
That day was fecund ; and, albeit in its humility,
it believed itself to be inactive and powerless, still
it created. Numberless are the poems, legends,
churches, systems which it has produced, as in a
dream. . . How does it happen that, if you belong
to it, you produce nothing \
The middle-age, which you are ever ready to
show to us, as if fixed in idiot immobility, was, for
fifteen hundred years, one continuous series of
action and of fecund transformation. (I retrench
a long digression into which I entered here.) The
free vegetation peculiar to it, has nothing in com-
mon with the dry, hard action of machines f .
* (Alluding to the three days, 1830.)
t The living symbolism of the middle age, which was
constantly changing, under an apparently immoveable form,
resembled in this respect all living things ; for instance,
Had it had no other action, it would have produced
no living thing, it would have been barren — and
as such, you would indeed resemble it.
No ; you belong not to the past ! No ; you
belong not to the present !
Do you exist ? No ; you give no sign of exist-
ence. . . You are a pure accident, a simple phe-
nomenon, not a living formation. That which
really exists, produces.
If you come, you who are not, who produce
nothing, who will produce nothing, to exhort us to
be like unto you, to renounce our living energies,
to confide ourselves to you, to nothingness; we
answer, " The world must not die yet ; that death
will come, we know : but this is no I'eason why
we should want all to die with us."
If you insist, if you will be accounted something,
I will grant that you ai'e an old engine of war*,
a fireship of Philip the Second's, part of the in-
vincihle Armada. . . . Whoso embarks in it will
perish ; Philip II. and Charles X., and all who
shall follow their example.
Offspring of war, you remain faithful to the law
of your birth. Your works are disputes, scholastic
and polemic arguments, that is, negations. . . We
work, you fight ; which of these two means is the
Christian one ?
Soldiers ('tis your name), sheathe your swords.
" Blessed are the peacemakers."
Do as we did before you began to trouble us —
work in peace. Then only will you learn to
understand Christianity and the middle-age, of
which you have so little idea.
To whom do I address this advice, which is not
that of an enemy ? To the Society (of Jesus) ?
No. Its boast is that it never changes, never
improves + ! . . . I speak to those unfortunate
members of the Society, whom I can now picture
to myself as conscious, too late perhaps, of having
plunged into the path from which there is no
returning, and secretly mourning their espousal of
death.
(The latter part of this lecture was reprinted,
without my privity, in the Patrie of the same
plants, which change so gradually as to tempt one to think
there has been no change. It is impossible for any thing
to be more opposed to the artificial, planned, premeditated
system, which makes enthusiasm a matter of forecast, and
reduces faith to a mechanical process.
• Three years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
Gregory XIII., who had returned thanks to God for that
happy event, granted the Je.suits all the privileges which
the pope had or ever would grant (conccssis ef concedeiidis)
to any of the clergy, secular or regular. HeTice, their pre-
tensions to represent the whole church, in conformity with
their ambitious title— The Society of Jesus. They are, in
point of fact, a dangerous counterfeit of the church. They
boldly plunder all previous rules, and copy St. Benedict, St.
Dominic, and St. Francis. Look at the originals, and you
will find the borrowed te.xts bear quite a different sense,
political and religious, from that into which they are
strained, and have nothing in common with the police of
the Jesuits . . . producing quite as ridiculous an effect as
if in the preamble of a law, passed for the regulation of our
civil police, it should be set forth that the law was grounded
on such or such axioms of the Divina Commedia.
t The well-known saying of the general of the order, —
" S'lnt ut sunt, aut non siiit." (Let them be as they are, or
not be at all.)
REACTIONS OF THE PAST.
evening, and, ou the following day, April 28tli, in
the Slecle. I did not foresee the active part which
the press would take in this struggle.
I did not know either, and, strange as it may
seem, it is not less true, that my friend, M. Quuiet,
having brought down his lectures to the middle of
the sixteenth century, was about to treat of the
literature of the Jesuits. . . . What may seem
more surprising still is the fact, that / had not read
a single line of all that liad been mriUen against me.)
LECTURE THE SECOND*.
REACTIONS OF THE PAST.— REVISITATIONS t : "PERINDE AC CADAVER J."
He is standing on the defensive, is what one says
of me : He is assuming the offensive, says another.
I am doing neither. . . I am teaching.
The professor of history and of moral philosophy
has a right to inquire into the gravest question
belonging to the domain of philosophy and of
histoi-y ; namely, what are organism and mechanism,
and iu what living organism differs from barren
mechanism ?
A grave question, and especially so at this
moment when life seems waxing weaker, when we
are becoming more and more barren, when Eu-
rope, heretofore fully occupied with imitating
France, with counterfeiting or translating France,
marvels at seeing our diminishing productiveness.
I have instanced a signal example of mechanism,
powerful for action, powerless for production — the
order of the Jesuits, which, during three centui'ies
of existence, lias been unable to produce one single
man, one single work of genius
The Jesuits, quite as much as the Templars, are
amenable to the verdict of history. It is both my
right and my duty to make you acquainted with
the spirit of these great associations. I began with
the Templars, and am now come to the Jesuits.
Two days ago, they stated iu their paper, that I
was attacking the denjy. It is exactly the reverse.
Exposing the tyrants of the clergy, that is, the Je-
suits, is rendering the clergy the greatest possible
service, and paving the way for their deliverance.
We are in no danger of confounding the victims
with the tyrants. Let not the latter hope that
they can shelter themselves behind that great body
which they are compromising by urging it into
violence when it only seeks peace.
As I have observed, the Jesuits are a formidable
engine of war, devised in the heat of the struggle
of the sixteenth century, and used as a desperate
resource, full of danger to those who employ it. . .
There is one spot where this is thoroughly known
— Rome ; and hence the cardinals have always
said, and will ever say, in the conclave, when a
Jesuit is proposed for pope, "Dignus, sed Jcsuita §."
They know that the order, at bottom, worships
itself. . . . And so did the Templars.
Christianity has only been able to amend the
• Delivered May 4th, 1S43.
+ M. Michelet's term is " Revenants," literally, "Ghosts,
Spirits-"
X " Even as a dead body."
§ " A fit person, but a Jesuit." This was said of cardinal
Bellarmine.
world, by mixing with the world ; and fi'om that
moment, it has had to submit to the world's sad
necessities, and, saddest of all, to war. Chris-
tianity, which is peace, has, at various periods,
turned warrior ; that is, at these periods, it has be-
come anti-Christian.
The engines of war which have thus, by a strange
miracle, been the work of the religion of peace,
being in flagrant contradiction with their principle,
have, from the first, exhibited a singularly I'epul-
sive and lying aspect. And how much more repul-
sive and lying must they appear, as the progress
of time removes us further from the circumstances
which occasioned, and the exigences which might
have accounted for their invention ! Becoming
more and more at variance with existing manners
and institutions, their origin forgotten, and their
repulsiveness only the more apparent, they inspii'ed
an instinctive repugnance, and society shrank from
them it knew not why.
A similar repugnance is inspired by every phan-
tom which returns from the troubled and violent
world of past ages, to visit this modern world of
ours. The eldest born of the ooze, who erst had
this globe, covered with water and with mist, alone
to themselves, and who now knead with their equi-
vocal limbs the tepid slime of the Nile, seem sent
forth as a claim from chaos, longing once more to
engulph us.*
God, who is beauty, has not created absolute
ugliness. Ugliness is an inharmonious passage, an
imperfect state of transition. f
There is one ugliness of one kind, another of
another ; the one seeks to be less ugly, to harmo-
nize, adjust itself, follow a progressive course, fol-
low God. . . . The other seeks to be more ugly, and,
in proportion as the world acquires the symmetry
of order, pants for ancient chaos.
And so, in history and iu art, we sympathize with
those foul and repulsive forms which pant to be
changed : " Expecto, Domine, donee veniat immuta-
* The serpent of the antique age presents himself full of
beauty, shining, scaled, and winged : " See my beautiful
scales and wings ; mount my back ; let us fly together unto
the light !" " What ! undertake to fly with that reptile's
belly ! You, bat as you are, take me to the sun ! . . . .
Avaunt, chimerical monsters ! avaunt, living liars !
Sacred light, come to my aid against the phantoms of chaos
and the reign of ancient night !"
t The text is : — " Dieu, qui est la beaute, n'a pas cree
de laideur absolue. La laideur est un passage inharmo-
nique."
10
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
tatio mea *." Look in our cathedrals, at those un-
happy, bowed down figures which, bent under the
Aveight of some enormous pillar, strive, neverthe-
less, to lift the head, the outward sign of the aspi-
rations of the unhappy people of that day ; and
whom you find to have been in the fifteenth cen-
tury, foul and grotesquely distorted in feature, but
intelligent and thoughtful ■}■: athwart their re-
pulsive visage gleams the harmony of modern
times.
The odious, incurable foulness, that which shocks
the eyes, and still more the heart, is that which
convicts the will of stagnation, and of not allowing
any amelioration at the hands of the great Artist
who is ever amending his own work.
Thus, when Christianity becomes conqueror, the
Pagan gods prefer flight. They plunge into the
recesses of the woods, live wildly there, and become
more and more uncouth, and old wives cabal for
them on Macbeth's " blasted heath." This obsti-
nate tendency towards the past, this attempt to go
backward, when God leads forward, is regarded
by the middle age as the ill of ills, and is called the
Devil.
Precisely the same horror is felt of the Albi(jeols,
when the latter, who styled themselves Christians,
revived the Persian and Manichean duality. It
seemed as if Ahriman had returned, in the very
face of Christianity, and taken his seat by God.
Less gross, but not less impious, seems to have
been the mystery of the Temple.
A strange religion this of soldier-monks, who,
out of their contempt for priests, seem to have
blended the superstitions of the ancient Gnostics
and Mussulmans, desiring no more of God than the
Holy Ghost, whom they enclose in the peneti'alia
of the Temple, and keep to themselves. " The or-
der itself, it would seem, became their God. They
worshipped the Temple, and the Templars, their
chiefs, as living temples ; and they symbolized by
the filthiest and most disgusting ceremonies their
blind devotion and complete abandonment of will.
The order closing itself in on this wise sunk into
a fierce worship of itself, into a Satanic egotism.
The most eminently diabolical feature of the devil,
is his worshipping himseli'J."
Thus, this engine of war, which the Church had
invented for the service of the Crusades, was so
well handled by her, that when she thought she
was thorough mistress of it, she found its point
at her own breast ! Still, her danger was the less,
inasmuch as this bastard creation of the monk-
soldier had little vitality out of the Ci'usades, that
is, independently of the cause which called it into
being.
The contest waged in the sixteenth century,
called a much more dangerous soldiery into exist-
ence. At the crisis when Rome was attacked in
Rome itself, by the writings of Luther and the
arms of Frundsberg, there comes from Spain a
valiant soldier who vows himself to her sei'vice, an
enthusiastic and a politic-minded man. The sword,
thus held out to her in her hour of danger, she
• " I wait, O Lord, my expected change."
+ See the statue of Jean Bureau's daughter, at Versailles,
(For some account of Jean Bureau, see Michelet's His-
tory of France, vol. ii. p. 165, in Whittaker's " Popular
Library.")
t Michelet's History of France, vol. J. p. 316, in Whittaker's
" Popular Library."
clutches so eagerly and so confidently, that she
casts away the sheath. She invests the general of
the Jesuits with full power, precluding herself from
ever allowing them, even at their own instance,
privileges contrary to their original foundation.
{NuHius inomentihabenda siint,etiamsi a ^ede Apos-
tolicd shit concessa *.) The pope is to introduce no
change. The general, in conjunction with the
assembly of the order, will change whatever lie
sees proper, according to fitness of place and time.
What constituted the strength and legitimate
influence, the order, as soon as instituted, was that
it maintained, in opposition to the Protestants who
exaggerated the divine control, the freedom of
man's will.
And what use does he proceed to make of this
freedom ? He submits it to the Jesuits ; he- em-
ploys it to obey ; and whatever he is commanded,
he mil believe to be just f . In the hands of his su-
periors, he will be like a staff in the hands of an
old man, who does what he likes with it, and will
suffer himself to be pushed this way or that as un-
resisthhjly as a corj^se .- — Perhide ac cad.ater.
To prop up this doctrine of obedience and of
tyranny, the spy-system is authorized by the founder
of the order himself.
His successors draw up the great moral scholas-
tic or casuistry, which provides for all things a
distinguo, a nisi. ... J The chief power of their
society was derived from this art of juggling with
morality, which constituted the all-powerful attrac-
tion of their confessional. Their preaching was
severe ; their spiritual direction indulgent. Strange
bargains were struck between the alarmed con-
sciences of the great of this world, and the all-
politic direction of the society.
The most efficacious means of conversion, which
the Jesuits have the honour of devising and of
putting in practice, was kidnapping the children, in
order to force the parents to turn convertites. New
and most ingenious means, which had escaped the
researches of Nero and of Diocletian !
One fact will serve. About 1650, a lady of Iiigh
rank in Piedmont, a worldly liver and the prey of
her passions, found her end approaching. Her
confessors were Jesuits, and yet they gave her but
little comfort. At this awful moment, she bethought
herself of her husband, from whom she had been
long estranged, and sent for him. " I have been a
great sinner," she said, " and, perchance, towards
you. I have much to expiate, and believe my soul
to be in danger. Aid me, and swear that you will
employ all means, even fire and sword, to convert
the Vaudois." The husband, a brave soldier,
swore to fulfil her wishes, and spared no military
I'ecourse to accomplish them; but without success.
The Jesuits, more crafty, bethought themselves
of seizing upon the children, feeling sure that the
mothers would follow. . . .§
The same means, and by the same hands, was
* " Such privileges to be of no weight, albeit granted by
the holy see."
t . . " Obedientia, turn in executione, tum in voluntate,
turn in intellectu, sit in nobis semper ex omni parte perfecta
. . . omnia jusia esse nobis persttadendo." Constit. p. 123, in
12mo, Roma?, in Collegio Societatis, 1583.
J " I take a distinction " — " 1 observe an exception."
§ The edict of Turin, passed in 1655, proves the horrible,
fact by the very amelioration it introduces : — " Prohibition
against seizing boys under twelve years of age, girls under ten."
REACTIONS OF THE PAST.
II
had large recourse to on the revocation of the edict
of Nantes. Louis XIV. felt repugnant to it ; but
Madame de Maintenon, who had " no little ones,"
persuaded him that no happier or more efhcacious
expedient could be devised. . . . The cries of the
mothers have mounted to the skies !
It is nothing surprising, therefore, that we, too,
should feel a repugnance to entrusting our children
! into the hands of those who first counselled this
abduction of children. The mechanical education
imparted by the Jesuits, may cultivate the in-
tellect, perhaps, but it crushes the soul. One may
know much, and none the less be without a living
soul: — Perinde ac cadaver.
There is one thing, besides, which ought to inspire
distrust. Who can say what the Jesuits now are,
and what they are doing ? . . . Their existence is
more mysterious than ever.
We are justified in saying to them. It is no fair
match between you and us. We publish our every
thought, and live in the open day. Who is there
to hinder you from saying Yes in the morning, and
in the evening No 1
All know what we are doing, and see us at work,
whether for good or ill. Hei'e we come day by
day, bearing with us our whole life, our very heart,
for our enemies to feed upon.
And for long years (simple as we stand here,
and hard-working) have we nourished them with
our substance. We may say to them, as the
wounded man to the vulture in the Greek poem,
" Eat, bird, 'tis the flesh of a brave man ; thy beak
will grow a cubit longer."
See yourselves, now ; what is it on which you
live, wretchedly poor as you are ?
The very tongue in your mouth, with which your
advocates attack J. J. Rousseau, is, to the best of
their ability, Rousseau's tongue. ... It is rhe-
toric and reasoning, but with little power of observ-
ing facts.
Who, twenty years back, revived Christian spiri-
tuality— you \ Dare you say it was you ?
Who excited in the public mind a fervour for the
middle-age — you ? Dare you say it was you ?
We have lauded the past, have lauded St. Louis,
St. Thomas, even Ignatius Loyola. . . . And you
have stepped forward and said, I am Loyola. No;
you are not Loyola. A man of genius could not
use the same means at the present day which he
employed centuries back. . . .
This very church in which you preach has stood
for ages, and you saw it not. We have been obliged
to show it to you, to help you to discover the towers
of Notre-Dame ; and then you have slipped into it
whether Notre-Dame liked or not, have turned it
into an arsenal, and mounted your batteries on the
towers of this house of peace. . . .
Well ! let this same house judge betwixt you and
us, which of the two are the true successoi'S of the
men who built it ?
You say that all is complete ; you Avant no addi-
tion. You think the towers high enough — and so
they are, to erect your engines upon.
We, on the contrary, say that we must be ever
building, adding work to work, and these, living
works ; that as God is ever creating, we ought to
imitate him as we best may, and to create likewise.
You would have all stop, and we have kept going
on. Despite you, we, in the seventeenth century,
discovered heaven (as Ave did the earth in the fif-
teenth), and you have been indignant therefore ;
yet have you been compelled to acknowledge the
immense addition to religion. — Was Christianity it-
self realized antecedently to the law of nations
which introduced peace even into Avar, and antece-
dently to civil equality? — Who has opened up these
grand highways ? these modern times Avhich you
accuse ? And civil equality, Avhich you begin to
knoAv by name so as to employ it against us, is
another addition to the grand edifice we are rear-
ing, Avhich Ave claim as ours. . . . We are masons,
Avorkmen. Suffer us to go on building, to go on
prosecuting from age to age the Avork common to
all, and, without ever growing Aveary, to go on rais-
ing higher and higher the everlasting Church of
God*!
[This lecture was interrupted by various marks
of insolent disapprobation, Avhich Avere so offensive
to the rest of the auditory, that the offending indi-
viduals Avere hooted as soon as they got into the
street.
The following Wednesday, M. Quinet lectured,
and established on undeniable grounds the rights
and freedom of the professorial chair. The papers
declared one after the other for us (the National
•and ConstUutionnel, on May 5th ; the Debats, on the
13th ; the Revue des Deux Mondes, on the 15th ; the
Courrier, on the 17th ; the Revue Independante, on
tlie 25th). The SiecU reported both M. Quinet's
lectures and mine.
A neAV review {Joxirnal de la LibeHe ReUgicitse,
edited by M. Goubault), the first number of which
appeared on May 15th, gave extracts from them ;
and large extracts Avere also published in various
provincial and also foreign papers, as the Journal
de Rouen, Echo de Vesone, Courrier de Lyon, Espe-
rance, Helvetic, Courrier Suisse, S[c.
On Thursday, May 11th, it being my turn to lec-
ture, many of my colleagues and of the most illus-
trious of my friends, foreignei-s as well as French,
Avere pleased to protest, as it Avere, by their pre-
sence, against these unAvorthy attacks, and to honour
me by surrounding my chair.]
• (Many of the allusions and turns of thought in this
lecture will only be understood by those who are acquainted
with M. Michelet's History of France, and with his peculiar
views and phraseology as an historian. — Translator.)
12
JESUITS AND JESUITISM,
LECTUEE THE THIRD*.
EDUCATION, DIVINE AND HUMAN.— THE EDUCATION WHICH IS CONTRARY TO
NATURE.
Far advanced in life as I am, and devoted to
solitary and laborious studies, I experience, on
glancing back at the past, a most sweet and sooth-
ing compensation for all that I may have missed.
And this is, that it has been granted to me, as
much as to any man of this age, to envisage in his-
tory a mystery which is truly divine.
I speak not of the spectacle of those great dra-
matic crises which seem God's strokes of state-
policy {les coups d'etat de Dieu). ... I speak of
the gentle, patient, often almost imperceptible
action, by which Providence prepares, awakens,
and develops life, tends, nurses, and gradually
strengthens it. {Clamour, interruption.)
I call upon my illustrious friends, historians,
either of humanity or of nature, whom I see pi-e-
sent, to declare whether they liave not considered
the contemplation of what may be called the mater-
nity of Providence, the highest recompense of their
toils, their best consolation in the vicissitudes of life?
God is a mother. . . . This is plain to all who
can see the tender care with which He brings the
vastest powei's within reach of the feeblest beings.
. . . For whom or what this stupendous fabric,
this concourse of elements, these waters exhaled
from distant seas, this light which travels thirty
millions of leagues ? What is this favourite of God's
whom nature hastes to serve, and for whom she
moderates her energies and holds her breath ? . . .
'Tis a simple blade of grass !
Looking at these cautious, delicate cares, this
ear of hurting, this desire of preserving, this tender
consideration for all existence, who can mistake the
mother's hand ?
The great mother, the great nui'se, is like all
mothers — she fears to force. She surrounds, but
does not press ; she influences, but does not com-
pel ; she is ever giving, but gradually and little at
a time ... so that the nursling, whatever it be,
may not long remain passive, may aid itself, and
may finally act according to its kind.
The constant miracle of the world is, that infinite
strength, far from crushing weakness, wishes
weakness to grow into strength. Omnipotence
seems to make divine felicity exist in creating,
encouraging life, action, liberty. (Clamour, violent
altercation, long interruption.)
The sole aim of education should be to imitate
this conduct of Pi'ovidence in the culture of man.
Its object should be the development of a free
creature, so that it may, in its turn, act and create.
In the disintei'ested and tender education which
they give their child, parents want nothing for
themselves, but all for him ; they want his faculties
and the fulness of his powers to grow and ripen
harmoniously, so that he may gradually become
strong, be a man, and fill their place.
Above all, tliey want their child to develop all
the activity of liis nature, though they be the
• Delivered May 11th, 1843.
sufferers. . . If the father fence with him, he yields
him the advantage in order to embolden him ;
retreats, suffers himself to be hit, never thinks
that he hits hard enough. . .
The sole thought of parents, the end of their
cares for so many years, is that their child may at
last be able to do without them. Even the mother
resigns herself to this, sees him depart, launches
him into dangerous careers, into the navy, the
army ! In wliat view ? That he may return a
man, embrowned with the sun of Africa, dis-
tinguished and admired ; that then he may marry,
and love another more than his mother.
Such is the disinterestedness of family nature :
all that is asked for is to produce a free and strong
man, able, when the occasion calls, to detach
himself and be his own support.
The artificial families, or fraternities of the
middle age, were imbued, in their origin, with
a portion of this divine character of the natural
family, of harmonious development into freedom.
The large monastic families, at tlieir outset, had a
shadow of it ; and it was then that they produced
the great nien who are their representatives in the
sight of history. They were only fecund, so long
as they allowed some latitude to free development.
The Jesuits alone, instituted for specific violent
action, political and warlike, have undertaken to
absorb the whole man in this action. Tliey want
to appropriate him to themselves without reserva-
tion, and to employ and to keep him from his
cradle to the grave. They take possession of him
by education ; before the reason, awakened, can
stand in its defence, they obtain the mastery over
him by preaching ; and they guide him, even in
his most trivial doings, by becoming his spiritucd
directors.
What is this education of theirs ? Their apolo-
gist, the Jesuit Cerutti, explains it in a manner
that there is no mistaking : " Just as one swaddles
the baby's limbs in the cradle, to insure their just
proportion, it is necessary, from earliest youth, to
swaddle, if I may so speak, the will, to insure it all
throughout life a happy and salutary suppleness."
(Apologie, p. 330.)
If one could for a moment admit that a swaddled
faculty could ever become a free agent, the admis-
sion must be retracted when we bring side by side
with this simpering word the franker expression
which they have not feared to inscribe in their
rule, and which indicates both the precise kind of
obedience they require and what man must become
in their hands — " Like a stick, like a corpse."
But they may urge — " If the will only be
annihilated, may there not be a compensation in
what the other faculties will proportionally gain ?"
Prove that they have gained. Pi'ove that a
man's mind and intellect can live, and his will be
dead. . . Where are the great men you have pro-
duced these last three hundred years ? . . .
EDUCATION.
13
And though one side of a man might be the
gainei" by the weakening of the other side, who gives
you a right to practise operations of the kind ?
Who, for instance, authorizes you to pluck out the
left eye under pretence of strengthening the
right ?
I know that the English breeders have found
out the art of making strange specialties— sheep
whicli are nothing but tallow, oxen which are
nothing but meat, elegant skeletons of horses to
win prizes with ; and, to ride these horses, dwarfs:
wretched beings, who are forbidden to grow !
Is it not impious to apply to the soul this
shocking art of making monsters, and to say to it :
" Thou shalt sacrifice this faculty, retain that ;
we will leave thee memory, discrimination in unim-
portant matters, habits of business and of craft ;
but we will deprive thee of that which constitutes
thy essence, which is thyself, of will, of liberty ! . . .
so that, thus lopped, thou mayest still live on as an
instrument, but no longer belong to thyself." . , .
To make these monstrosities, a monstrous art is
required.
The art of keeping men together, and yet isolated,
united for action, disunited in heart, contributing
to one same end, whilst making war on each other.
To bring about this state of isolation in con-
junction with a state of society, the first step must
be to leave the inferior members in perfect
ignorance of what is to be revealed to them when
they reach the superior ranks, (Reg. coram, xxvii.)
so that they may proceed blindly from one stage
to the other as if climbing by night *.
This is the first point to be secured. The second
must be, to create a mutual distrust of one
another by the fear of mutual betrayals, by the
spy-system. (Reg. comm. xx.)
The third, the complement of this artificial sys-
tem, is to arrange a set of educational works which
shall show them the world in a false point of view,
so that, deprived of all means of self-conti-ol and
instruction, they may be for ever imprisoned, walled
in, as it were, in falsehood.
I will instance only one of these works — their
Abridgment of the History of France (edit, of
1843 1) ; a work, millions of copies of which have,
during the last five-aud-twenty yeai's, been cir-
culated in France, in Belgium, in Savoy, Piedmont,
and Switzerland ; a work so thoroughly their own,
that they introduce changes in it year by year J,
* To justify their prohibiting their servants from learning
to read, they boldly quote St. Francis of Assisi {Rrg. com-
ment. Nigrotius, p. 303), who, owing to his implicit belief
in divine illumination, dispenses his followers from study-
ing I seem to see Machiavel turning to his own
political purposes, the saying wliich he heard fall from a
child's lips ! It is the same with many other points, the
letter of which the Jesuits have borrowed from the older
rules, to use in quite an opposite sense from their original
meaning; and which remain as so many witnesses to the
difference of their spirit from that of the middle age.
t Histolre de France, for the use of youth, t. ii. p. 342,
in 12mo: a new edition, revised and corrected, 1843, and
published at Lyons, by Louis Lesne, late Rusand. This
book, and all others by the same hand, is marked in the
catalogues with the sign, A. M. G. D. (Ad majorem gloriam
Dei, To the greater glory of God); or with the letters
L. N. N. (Lucet, non nocet. Shining, but hurting not.)
t And from month to month. In an edition published
in June, they suppressed a passage which I quoted in my
Lectures from au edition published in the January or
expunging the follies which had made the name of
its author notorious, but leaving all his calumnies
and blasphemies against France ... in every page
the English spirit and the glories of Wellington *.
Why, the very English have shown themselves
less English, and have refuted with contempt the
calumnies invented or renewed by the Jesuits of
our slain at Waterloo ; and, above all, that para-
graph in which, speaking of the refusal of the
imperial guard to sun-ender, the Jesuit historian
adds, — " These madmen %cere seen firing vpo7i and
slaying each other in face of the English, who stood
transfixed with horror at the sight."
Wretched man how little do you know of the
heroic generation that you are thus recklessly
calumniating ! They who have been honoured
with the intimacy of those heroes, will say whether
their calm coui'age could ever be sullied by impotent
rage. . . . More than one have I known, as gentle
as an infant. ... Ah! the powerful were mild,
indeed f .
If you have a grain of prudence, never speak of
those men or of those times ; pass the whole over
in silence. . . . You will be at once detected for
what you are — for the enemies of France. . . .
She hex'self will say to you, " Touch not my dead ;
beware, they are not as dead as you suppose! "
[The hand that directed the disturbance through-
out this lecture, was easily recognized ; and the
February preceding, and which lies before me as I write
this note, June 24th.
* It is worth while to look at the absurd speeches they
put in his mouth, full of insult to us (ii. 3lS), and the silly but
sanguinary effusions they attribute to Napoleon (ii. 324), — the
drivelling of idiot hate. On the 20th of March (1802— 1814 ?)
they make the people mingle with the cries of " Long live
the Emperor !" shouts of " Long live Hell !" " Down with
Paradise!" (p. 337.) AVhat can one think of their filling
two whole pages of this small work with a dissertation on
perukes (ii. ICS, 169)? The whole work, in fact, is of the
same character ; every where the same worldly and bigot
spirit, and the gravest things alluded to with a lamentable
levity, which shows the death of the heart within. Here
is the manner in which the author mentions the massacre
of St. Bartholomew: — "The marriage was celebrated; and
the joy of the festival would have been perfect but for the
bloody catastrophe which brought it to a close " (i. 294). But
exceeding all is the following impudent eulogium passed
by the Jesuits on the Jesuits : " By a distinction, honour-
able to this order, all the enemies of religion were considered
to be its enemies " (ii. 103) !
t How many proofs could I not cite ! Here is one which
deserves to be saved from oblivion. At the battle of \Va-
gram, one of the batteries of the imperial guard took up its
station for a moment on a spot covered with the wounded
of the enemy. One of these, who was suffering agony
from his wound, as well as from thirst and the heat, called
out to the French to put an end to him. Maddened at not
being understood, (he was an Hungarian,) he dragged him-
self to a loaded musket, and endeavoured to fire it at the
cannoneers. The French officer in command took the
musket from him, and hung some coats on a stack of mus-
kets to screen him from the heat. This officer was M.
Fourcy-Gauduin, an artillery captain of the guard, the
excellent historian of the Polytechnic-school, and the writer
of many charming poems, composed during the tremendous
wars of the empire, and on every battle-field of Europe.
He lies in our Cimeticre du Midi, with this simple epitaph
on his tomb, Hinc Surrecturus (About to rise hence), and
beneath, Sli/lo et Gladio Meruit (Distinguished both by his
pen and his sword) The two first words, so noble and so
christian, are those which he had himself inscribed on the
tomb of his mother — Jiinc Surrectura !
14
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
means employed wei'e altogether conformable with
the description I had been drawing of the method
pursued by the Jesuits, consisting in drowning the
voice of the lecturer, not by hisses, but by braros !
. . . This manoeuvre was executed by some dozen
individuals who had never attended the course, and
who had been beaten up as recruits that same
morning, in a large public establishment.
So un-French a manoeuvre disgusted the students;
and the more so that the disturbers of the lecture,
in their inexperience, broke out at random, and, as
it happened, at the most religious passages. They
were in danger from the indignation of the students,
especially one of their number, whom I had the
l)leasure of seeing a friend of mine protect by the
interposition of his own person.
On the evening of May the 16th, a deputation of
the students waited upon me with aiettei-, couched
in the most becoming terms, in which they ex-
pressed both their sympathy with the professor,
and their indignation at the unworthy attacks to
which he had been exposed. Two hundred and
fifty-eight signatures were appended to this letter
in a moment.
The papers, as I have already said, had declared
for us ; and, on the 15th, I addressed the following
letter to the editor of the Journal des Dtbats :
" Sir, — In an obliging article, in which you un-
dertake to establish the justice of our cause, you
state that we are employing the right of self-defence,
an expression which might lead some to infer that
we have postponed the subject-matter of our teach-
ing, and the syllabus of our lectures, (made out long
beforehand,) in order to meet the attacks on our
reputation.
" No, Sir, we are not defending ourselves. The
garbled, disfigured extracts quoted by our op-
ponents, are their own defence the moment they
are read in conjunction with the context. As to
the commentaries with which they are garnished,
who would dare to read them in pubiic ? The im-
purity of the monastic imagination displayed in
some would have made Aretine recoil ! (See the
Monopole Unirersitaire, p. 441.)
" In the very first lecture delivered by me this
year, I stated my subject ; it was the loftiest
question in the philosophy of history —
" The distinction betwixt living organism and
mechanism, or formalism and vain scholastics.
" I. In the first part of my course, I pi'oved
that this sterile spirit was not, as has been supposed,
the dominant principle of the middle age ; and I
inquired into the mystery of its fecund vitality.
" II. lu the second part of my course, I pro-
ceeded to show what judgment should be passed on
the false middle age which has been imposed upon
us. I have characterized it, externally, by its im-
potence and the sterility of its results ; and am now
penetrating into the heart of its mystery, the per-
fidiousness of its principle — which is, to take pos-
session of man by surprise ; to muffle him up before
he is of age to defend himself ; to sicaddle the will, to
borrow the phrase from the Apology for the Jesuits.
" Such was, such is, sir, the plan of my course.
Polemics only enter it to the support of theories; and
I have cited the order of the Jesuits as a case in point,
just as I had occasion to do that of the Templars.
" I am no brawler. The greater part of my
life has been spent in silence. I was advanced in
yeai's when I began to publish ; and ever since,
I have studiously avoided controversy. For twelve
years I have been absorbed in an immense under-
taking, which will occupy the whole of my life.
Yesterday, I was writing the History of France ;
and I shall be writing it to-morrow, and every day
as long as God will allow. All I ask of Him is to
preserve me, as he has heretofoi'e done, in a state
of equanimity, and master of my own heart and
judgment, so that the mountain of lies and calum-
nies which has long been amassing to overwhelm
me with at one blow, may not disturb a hair's
breadth the impartial balance which he placed in
my hand. I am. Sir, &c."
"Monday, May \btli, 1843."
On the 18th, our opponents perceived, by the
attitude of the silent crowd which filled all the
avenues of the College de France, that any further
attempt on the patience of the public would be dan-
gerous. The Lecture went off without the slightest
inteiiiiption. A person suspected, perhaps wrong-
fully, of an attempt at interruption, was handed
over the benches from one to anothei*, and in a mo-
ment expelled the room.
From that day the peace has been unbroken.]
LECTURE THE FOURTH*.
LIBERTY, FECUNDITY.— STERILITY OF THE JESUITS.
The liberty of the press has preserved liberty of
speech.
The instant a free thought, a free voice is raised,
there is no stifling it; it pierces through walls and
barred doors. How hinder six hundred persons
from hearing what will be read to-morrow by six
hundred thousand ?
Liberty is man. Even to subject oneself, one
must be free ; to give oneself away, one must be
one's own. He who could renounce his birthright
by anticipation would no longer be man, but thing
— Uod would own it not !
• Delivered May 18th, 1843.
Liberty is so essentiallly the fundamental of the
modern world, that her enemies have no other
weapon to combat her but herself. How was
Europe enabled to make head against the Revolu-
tion ? By giving, or by promising, liberty — com-
munal libei-ties, civil liberties (as in Prussia, Hun-
gary, Gallicia, &c.).
The violent adversaries of the liberty of thought
have derived all their power from this very liberty.
Curious, to see M. de Maistre, in tlie briskness of
his attack, momentarily escaping from the yoke
which he seeks to impose — here, more mystical than
the mystics condemned by the Church ; thei'e,
UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF THE JESUITS.
15
quite as revolutionary as the Revolution which he
combats.
Marvellous virtue of liberty ! The freest of ages,
our own, is also the most harmonious. It has de-
veloped itself, no longer by servile scliools, but by
cycles or great families of independent men, who,
without holding one of the other, yet go on even-
tually joining hands ; in Germany the cycle of
philosophers, of great composers; in France, the
cycle of historians and of poets, &c.*
Thus it has happened that precisely at the mo-
ment association ceased to be, and that religious
orders and schools had passed away, there began,
for the first time, that grand concert, in which each
nation within itself, and all nations between them-
selves, without any previous understanding, have
chimed in in accordant harmony.
The middle age, less free, could not originate
this noble harmony; but enjoyed, at least, the hope
of it, as it were, its prophetic shadow, in those great
associations whicli, albeit dependent, were never-
theless so many liberties in comparison with
preceding ages. St. Dominick and St. Francis,
drawing the monk out of his seclusion, sent him to
all parts of the world as preacher and as pilgrim.
This newly-born liberty diffused life by torrents. St.
Dominick, notwithstanding his fatal share in the
Inquisition, gave birth in crowds to profound theo-
logians, orators, painters, bold thinkers, until he
burned himself with his own hands, no more to come
to life, on the same stake with Bruno.
And so the middle age was not an artificial and
mechanical system, but a living being, which en-
joyed liberty, and through liberty, fecundity ; which
truly lived, for it worked and produced. And now
that it rests, it has earned its rest like any other
good workman. We, who woi'k to-day, shall
readily go and lie down by it to-morrow.
But first, both it and we shall be summoned
to answer for our deeds. Ages, like men, are
accountable. We moderns shall appear with
the men of the middle age, bearing our works in
our hands, and presenting our great workmen.
We shall point to Leibnitz and Kant ; it, to St.
Thomas : we, to Ampere or Lavoisier ; it, to Roger
Bacon : it, to the composer of the Dies Irce, of the
Stahat Mater ; we, to Beethoven and Mozart.
Yes, this antique age hath wherewithal to answer.
St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, will present
themselves bearing great works, which, scholastic as
they may appear, were nevertheless works of life.
Whom or what have the Jesuits to produce ?
It is wholly irrelative, when we point to these
two imposing galaxies of the geniuses of the middle
and of the modern ages, to produce men of learning,
of cultivated mind, agreeable Latin versifiers, a
good preacher — Bourdaloue, an ingenious philoso-
pher— Bufifier-l-: all they can show is little as regards
* The same development is observable in science since
the commencement of the century. You find the chemists
of France and mechanicians of England, during the great
struggle between the two countries, labouring face to face,
and, nevertheless, labouring in perfect harmony, all draw-
ing from the bosom of nature those marvellous powers,
which, though sought after under the inspiration of war, yet
still remain in everlasting and peaceful perpetuity to man-
kind.
t See the list in the Jesuit Cerutti's Apology (p. 292.
310): — Historians, Bougeant, T>uha]de, Strada, Charlevoix,
Maimbourg, &c. Men of deep learning, Petau, Sirmond,
literature, and nothing, or worse than nothing'
as regards art. See their influence upon that
meretricious school of painting, which, like some
antiquated and affected coquette, has been on the
wane ever since Mignard's day*.
No ; those are no works for you to show ; but
you have others.
And, first, your historiesf , often learaed, always
to be read with suspicion, always biassed by party
interest. Your Daniels and Marianas could not
have spoken the truth, had they wished it. Your
writers lack one thing, that which you labour the
hardest to destroy, that which a great man has
pronounced to be the quaUty essential to the his-
torian : " A lion's heart, to speak the truth always!"
In reality, you have but one work you can claim
as your own — a code.
I mean the rules and constitutions by which you
are governed ; add the dangerous chicanery in
whicli you train your confessors for the govern-
ment of souls.
In going over that great work, The Constitutions
of the Jesuits, one stands aghast at the immensity
of the details, at the infinitely minute foresight
which it exhibits. It is rather a great, than a
grand J construction, and fatigues the eye, because
It no where offers the simplicity of life ; because
we observe, with alarm, that the living powers
figure there as stones. One would fancy one saw
a huge church, not like that of the middle age in
its simple vegetation ; no — a church whose walls
present only the heads and faces of men who look
and listen, but no body nor limb ; the limbs and
bodies being for ever blocked up, alas ! in the im-
moveable stone.
The whole edifice reared on the one principle —
mutual superintendence, mutual denunciation, a
perfect contempt for human nature — (perhaps, a
natural contempt at the fearful epoch when the
order was instituted).
Bollandus, Gaubil, Parennin, &c. Men of letters, Bouhours,
Rapin, La Rue, Jouvency, Vani^re, Sanadon, &c. Many
scientific and able men they have to show, but not one man
of genius. Their best argument would be, that having
started into being in time of warfare, and having generally
led a life of action, they have acted rather tlian created, and
that we should examine what they did, rather than what
they may have left behind. In answer, we inquire whether
their action upon life has been really productive ; and the
result, even as regards their missions, is a decided negative.
See a Lecture of M. Quinet's, further on.
• Poussin loved neither the Jesuits nor their painting.
He drily answered their objection, that he represented
Jesus Christ under too austere a figure, "That our Lord
was not a sleek parson (un pere douillet)."
t The entire order is an historian, an indefatigable bio-
grapher, a laborious keeper of records (archivisle) ; for it
relates, day by day, to its general, all that takes place in
the world.
X All that is borrowed in this work from the middle age
is invested with a modern character, frequently the opposite
of the ancient spirit. Its prevailing genius is that of the
scribe; an endless mania for regulating, a superintending
curiosity, which never stops, and which strains to see and
to sound a bottom beyond the bottom. Hence the strange
refinements of their casuistry, and the melancholy hardi-
hood which leads them to stir up and decompose tilth, at
the risk of sinking deeper into it. To sum up, the work
displays a petty, subtle, captious spirit, a spurious mixture
of bureaucracy and scholasticism, a spirit of police rather
than of policy.
16
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
The superior is begirt by his councillors ; the
membei's, the novices, and the pupils, by their
brethren or comrades, ready to denounce them.
And shameful are the precautions taken even
against the most dignified and longest tried mem-
bers *.
Gloomy society, how much I pity thee ! . . .
But must not man, so ill at ease within its bosom,
be so much the more active when partially released
from its trammels, and filled with a dangerous rest-
lessness ? The only means of slightly lessening the
pressure of this fearful spirit of police is for the
sufferer himself to carry it into every thing.
Is not the introducing a police of the sort into
education an impiety ? What ! you lay your hand
on this poor soul, which has but a day's existence
between two eternities, but one day to become
worthy of everlasting beatitude, in order to con-
vert the child into the betrayer, that is to say, to
make him resemble the devil, who, we learn in the
book of Genesis, was the first betrayer the world
saw !
All the services which the Jesuits have had it
in their power to render f, cannot efface this one
* There is a police and a counter-police. The penitent is
even set as a spy on her confessor, and, at times, deputed to
try him with insidious questions ! A woman made to act
the spy, by turns, on two men jealous the one of the other;
a hell beneath hell ! Where is the Dante who could have
imagined this ? The reality is much vaster and more terrible
than all fancy or imagination ! . . . . Espial of this sort is
not specified in the rule, but it is observed in practice.
t And indisputably they have rendered services, as re-
gards the transition stage of study between the education of
the schoolmen and that of modern times. Neverthelese,
their plan of instruction is spoiled, even in what is most
judicious in it, by a petty spirit, and by a needlessly minute
subdivision of times and studies. All this is pitifully frag-
mentary—a quarter of an hour for four lines of Cicero;
another quarter of an hour for Virgil, &c. And, together
with this, we must reprobate their mania for arranging
authors, and blending their own style with theirs, for dress-
ing up the ancients as Jesuits, &c.
foul blot. Even their method of teaching, and of
education, in many respects judicious, is, never-
theless, impressed with a mechanical and automa-
ton-like character. It has none of tlie spirit of
life. It regulates the exterior, and the interior
may follow as it can. Among other points of re-
gulation, the pupils are instructed to carry their
heads properly, always to cast down their eyes a little
lower than those of the person whom they address, and
to take care to keep the nose from curling, a7id the fore-
head from wrinkling*, the too visible signs of dupli-
city and cunning. These hapless players do not
know that serenity, the air of candour, and moral
gi'ace and dignity, proceed from within, and mount
from the heart to the face j that they are inimi-
table.
Such, gentlemen, are the enemies with whom we
have to do. Religious liberty, on which they
sought to Lay hands, is guarantee for all the rest —
for political liberty, for that of the press, for that
of speech, which I beg to thank you for having
maintained. Guard well this grand inheritance.
You are the more bound to keep it untouched and
unscathed, inasmuch, young men, as you have re-
ceived it from your fathers, and not won it for your-
selves. It is the prize of their efforts, the fruit of
their blood. Desert it ! As well might you shatter
their very tombs !
Ever bear in mind the saying of a venerable
man of a former day, of the man with the white
beard, as he calls himself, of the Chancellor L'Ho-
pital : " Lose one's liberty ! Gracious God, what
is there left one to lose after that ?"
* JnstUutum Soc. Jes. ii. 114, ed. Prag. in folio. Not a
single change has been introduced into the educational
system of the Jesuits. All the details described in the
work entitled, L'Interieur de Saint-Acheul, par un de ses
eleves, have been confirmed to me by youths brought up at
Brugelete, Brieg, and Fribourg.
LECTURE THE FIFTH
FREE ASSOCIATION, FECUNDITY.— STERILITY OF THE CHURCH IN BONDAGE.
The base and violent attacks made upon me since our
last meeting, compel me to say a word of myself.
One word ; the first, and it will be the last.
Gentlemen, our acquaintance is now of long date.
Most of you have been brought up, if not by me
personally, at least by my books, and by pupils
of mine. All present know the line I have fol-
lowed.
That line has been at once liberal and religious.
It begins with the year 1827. In that year, I pub-
lished two works ; one was the translation of a
book which makes Providence the foundation on
which to build the philosophy of history ; the other
was an Abridgment of Modern History, in which
• Delivered May 2Cth, 1843.
I denounced, more strongly than I have ever since
done, fanaticism and intolerance*.
From that date I was known both by my books
and by my lessons at the Normal School ; lessons
carried by pupils of my own forming into every
corner of France. Not one word has been uttered
or taught by me since, at variance with the prin-
ciples on which 1 started.
Mine has not been a favoured career. One by
one 1 have advanced from stage to stage, without
having been spared a single gradation. Examina-
* See, in particular, my observations on the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, Precis de I'Histoire Moderne, p. 141
(ed. 1827).
PRESENT UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF THE CHURCH.
17
tioii, eioclioii, seiiiorit}' have formed the ladder by
whicli I have risen.
1 have had my humble origin cast in my teeth
— wli}', 'tis my glory ! {Applause.)
I have been accused of place-hunting * ; will they
tell nic when ? He, who for so many yeai'S, and with-
out respite, has been daily occupied with the double
labours of professor and of writer, has had but little
time to spare for prosecuting any personal views or
interests.
For years upon years have I led the life of those
Benedictines of our age, of Sismoudi and of Dau-
nou. The latter resided in a distant subui'b, inha-
bited by market-gardeners. Of a morning, as soon
as they saw the lamp in his window, they would
I rise to their daily work. " It is four o'clock," they
would say.
I When a man begins an immense work, like the
history of our native country, a work immeasurably
disproportionate to the brief span of human life, he
condemns himself to the life of a recluse ; a life,
I not unattended with danger; for at length one grows
I so absorbed in it as to be dead to all that is going
I on abroad, and to awaken only when the enemy is
forcing the door or when he has burst into the
I house.
But yesterday, I confess, I was wholly wrapped
I up in my work, shut in with Louis XL and Charles
the Rash, and busily trying to make them agree ;
when aroused by hearing at my windows that gi-eat
flight of bats, I put out my head to see what was
going on.
What did I see ? Nothingness taking possession
of the world ; and the world making no effort, the
world floating about as if on the raft of the Medusa,
and, choosing no longer to row, breaking up, de-
stroying the raft, and making signals ... to the
future ? ... to a saving soul ? . . . No ! ... to
the abyss, the void. . . .
The abyss gently murmurs, — Come to me, what
fear you ? See you not that / am nothing.
'Tis precisely because thou art nothing, that I fear
thee. 'Tis thy nothingness which I fear. I have
no fear of that which is ; what truly is, is of God.
The middle age has said in its last work, the
Imitation — " God speaks, and the doctors are si-
lent." We cannot affirm this — for our doctors
have not a word to say.
Do theology, philosophy, those two mistresses of
the world from whom the Spirit ought to descend,
do they still speak ?
Philosophy is dwindled down to history, to eru-
dition ; she translates, or she reprints, but teaches
no more.
Theology teaches no more. She criticizes, rails,
lives on the names of individuals, on the writings
•and reputation of Mr. So and So, whom she attacks.
But what is Mr. So and So to us ? Speak to us of
God!
It is high time, if we wish to live, for each, leav-
ing these doctors to dispute as they list, to seek life
in himself, to appeal to the voice within, to the per-
severing labours of solitude, to the succour of free
association.
* 1 applied for nothing under the Restoration, as I have
been accused of doinp; ; but I was myself applied to. At
what moment? In 1828, during the M-artignac ministry,
and through the mediation of an illustrious friend of mine
on whom that minister bestowed a professorship, with the
applause and approbation of the whole kingdom.
At the present day we no longer know what soli-
tude and association mean ; still less do we know
how solitary labour and free inter-communication
can reciprocally aid and quicken each other.
Yet, here also is salvation ! In my mind's eye
I see a whole people drooping and suffering, without
association, and without real solitude, however iso-
lated such people may be. Here, I see a whole
people of students, apart from their families (this
mountain of schools* is after all filled with exiles),
there, a whole people of priests scattered over the
country, an unfortunate swarm, hampered on the
one hand by the ill-will of the world, on the other
by the tyranny of their superiors, without a voice
to complain withal, and who, for half a century,
have diired only to sigh ■\.
All these men, now isolated, or forcibly associ-
ated so that they curse association, were grouped,
in the middle age, in free confraternities, in colleges,
where liberty had her share even under the domi-
nion of authority ; for many of these colleges were
self-governed, and nominated their own heads and
masters. And not only was their administration
free, but, in certain points, their studies. For in-
stance, in the great school of Navarre, in conjunc-
tion with the course of reading obligatory on all,
the students enjoyed the right of choosing some book
which they could study, elucidate, and master
among themselves. This liberty was fecund in re-
sults. The school of Navarre sent forth a crowd
of eminent men, orators, critics — Clemengis and
Launoy, Gerson and Bossuet, among the number J.
The liberties enjoyed by the schools of the mid-
dle age disappeared in succeeding times.
In these schools (too hastily condemned) little,
• (An allusion to the Pays Latin, as it is called, the
quarter of Paris in which the College de France and other
public seminaries are situated.)— Translator.
+ See the work entitled De I'Etat acltiel du Clerye, et en
particulier des Cures Ruraux appeles Desservanis, par MM.
AUignol, Pretres Desservants, 1839.
t See the fecundity of free development in those pleasing
associations of the great painters, from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century !
Whilst the master allows his pupils to work upon his
paintings, his vigorous impulse, nevertheless, goes on
throughout all this variety of handling. And they who
seem to immolate themselves to him, to be absorbed in him,
to be lost in his glory, gain the more, the more they forget
themselves. Free and light, above interest and selfish
pride, grace grows under their pencil, without their know-
ing how or whence. . . . See that youth : he was yesterday
grinding colours ; he is now himself the head and founder
of a school.
The truly divine feature of free association is this : that
whilst it proposes as its object such or such a given work,
it develops that which is above any work — the power which
can produce all works— union, brotherhood. In that picture
of Rubens's where you trace the hand of Vandyke, there is
a something greater than the picture, greater than art—
their previous friendship !
The more thoroughly the virtue of free association shall
be understood, the more delight we shall take in witnessing
new powers bursting into life, the more gladly shall we
reach out our hand to the new-comer. Every man of a
genius and a pursuit different from our own, brings with
him an element that we ought to welcome. He comes to
render us more perfect. Before him, the great lyre which
we form amongst ourselves, was not yet harmonic ; each
string acquires its value from its neighbour strings. If an
additional one be discovered let us rejoice ; the lyre will be
the more harmonious.
18
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
indeed, was taught, but the faculties were largely
exercised. With the sixteenth century, the aim is
changed, and knowledge is the imperative want. All
at once antiquity is rediscovered, and adds all her
stores to the science and learning already extant.
By what mechanism can this mass of words and
things be stored up in the memory ?
The inharmonious mass had produced only
doubt ; all was uncertain, both ideas and manners.
To extricate the human mind from this state of
fluctuation the strong machine of the Society of
Jesus was invented ; once submitted to which and
firmly riveted down, there would be no possibility
of wavering for a moment.
What was the result ? This barbarous idea of
holding life palpitating in an iron vice, missed
securing its object. When they fancied it had
firm hold, it held nothing. They found that they
had only grasped death.
And death spread. A spirit of distrust and
inactivity took possession of the Church. Talent
inspired suspicion. The deserving were those who
held their peace ; they resigned themselves to
silence, until it became easy to simulate death.
And when the imitation is so easy, the fact is that
death has taken place.
In our own time, the leading champions of the
clergy do not belong to their body (as the Bonalds,
the De Maistres). One priest has put himself
forward, only one *. . . Is he still a priest ?
Profound sterility, which only too clearly ex-
plains the silence that now prevails. . .
" What !" it may, perhaps, be objected, " is it
not sufficient to repeat and reiterate an everlasting
doctrine ?"
Why, precisely because it is eternal, because it
is divine, Christ, in his mighty awakenings, has
never been without a new robe, without the
raiment of youth. . . From age to age has his
vesture been renewed — by St. Bernard, and by
St. Francis, and by Gerson, and by Bossuet ! . . .
Extenuate not your impotence. If your churches
are crowded, attempt not to make us believe that
it is to hear your sifting of old controversies.
Before we have done with you, we will analyze
the different motives that have brought you your
hearers ; but, to-day, one question only — " Do
these crowds go to church in the view of quitting
the world, or of getting more quickly on in it ?" In
these days of competition more than one has imi-
tated the hurried man of business who, to escape
the jostling throng, takes advantage of some open
church, and, making a short cut through it, steals
a march on the simple ones, who are still elbowing
their way as they can.
Keeping the clergy sterile, forcing upon them
the dry, withering education of the sixteenth cen-
tury, imposing upon them the study of works
which only witness to the hideous state of the
morals of that age, is doing what their most deadly
enemies would shrink from doing.
What ! to enervate, to paralyze this great living
body ! to hold it inert, immovable ! to bar it
everything, except slander !
• The illustrious M. de la Mennais.
Why slander, why criticism, if you will, is still
only criticism ; that is, a negation. To become
more and more negative, is to lose more and more
of life.
We, whom they regard as their enemies, want
them to act, to live. And their superiors, or, to
speak plainly, their masters, will not suffer them
to give a sign of life. Which, I pray you, of the
two mothers in the judgment of Solomon, which
is the true, the loving mother ? She who would
haxe her child live.
Poor Church ! They must be thy adversaries,
then, who beseech thee to recognize thyself, to
share with them the task of interpretation, to call
to mind thy liberties and the grand prophetic
voices that have issued from thy bosom ?
Forgettest thou, then, 0 Church, the everlasting
words which one of thy prophets, Joachim de
Flores, listened to with respect by popes and
emperors, dictated in the year 1200, at the foot of
Etna ? His disciple tells us : " He dictated three
days and nights, without sleeping, eating, or drink-
ing ; I wrote . . . And he was pale as the leaves
of the forest :
" ' There have been three ages, three kinds of
persons amongst believers ; the first called to the
task of fulfilling the Law, the second to the work
of the Passion, the third elected unto the liberty of
Contemplation. This is what the Scriptures testify,
where it is written. There where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty. — The first age was an age
of slaves, the second of free men, the thii-d of
friends ; the first an age of aged men, the second
of men, the third of children ; in the first nettles,
in the second roses, in the third lilies. — The mys-
tery of the kingdom of God appeared at first as if in
deepest, night ; then it came to dawn like the
morning ; one. day it will shine in highest noon. . .
For, with each age of the world knowledge grows
and becomes manifold. It is written, Many will
pass away, and knowledge shall go on increasing.' "
Thus, from the depth of the thirteenth century,
the prophet saw the light of the modern world,
progress, liberty ; which the churchmen of this
day cannot recognize. You can descry Mont Blanc
at thirty leagues' distance, and yet cannot see
it when you live within its shadow.
It is liberty, that liberty announced by the
prophets, which now beseeches the Church, in
their name, not to die, not to allow herself to be
strangled by this heavy cope of lead, but rather
to raise up and free herself by clasping the young
and powerful hand liberty holds forth to her aid.
These pi'ophets, and we, their children (under a
different form, but that matters not), have felt God
alike, as the living and free Spirit which desii-es the
world freely to imitate him.
Throw down, then, your useless arms ; abjure
the mad war you are driven to wage contrary to
your inclinations. Would you have us stay here
like idle workmen, spending the whole day at the
corners of the streets, doing nothing but quarrel ?
Why not, rather, come, you and the rest, to work
with us whilst there are yet left a few hours of the
day, so that, by joining works and hearts, we may
all grow more and more — to use the expression of
the middle age — brothers in the free spirit.
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. THE SPIRIT OF DEATH.
19
LECTURE THE SIXTH *.
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. THE SPIRIT OF DEATH.
Whatever the pressure of worldly affairs, or in-
toxication of the passions, there is no man who
does not find at some moment of his life — the time
to muse on a higher life.
There is no man but has asked himself, when
sitting alone at his fireside after the fatigue of the
day, or refreshed by the night's rest, in the calm
morning hour, whether he was always to remain in
this world of pettinesses, whether he was never to
take wing !
At such serious moments, seldom to return, what
manner of man is it we meet ?
We meet two men, two languages, two minds.
One tells you to live a life eternal, no more to
disperse your powers, but to concentrate them
within yourself ; to embrace your destiny, your
particular study or art, with an heroic will; to
receive nothing, whether knowledge or belief, as a
dead lesson, but as a living thing — as a life starting
into life, which you are bound to quicken, nurse,
vivify ; creating, according to the measure of your
strength, in imitation of Him who is ever creating.
This is the grand road ; and, though that of fecun-
dating movement, does not take you out of the path
of sanctity. Have we not seen the eldest born of
God, to whom he granted to follow him in his path
of creation, — the Newtons, Yirgils, and Comeilles,
— walking in simpleness, remaining pure, and dying
children ?
So speaks the spirit of life. What says the
spirit of death ? That if we live, we should live
little, from less to less; and, above all, ci-eate
nothing.
" Beware," it exclaims, " from developing your
inward strength ; question not yourself ; believe not
the voice within ; search out of yourself, never in
yourself. What good is it to wear yourself out in
the prosecution of your life, your study ? Behold all
studies ready to your hand, short and easy ; you
have but to learn. A fool is he who seeks to soar.
'Tis safer to creep, and you reach the goal quicker.
" Let alone your Bible and your Dante. Take up
the Fleur des Saints (the " Flower of the Saints "),
the Petit Traite des Petites Vertus (the " Little Tract
on the Little Virtues'"). Pass this amulet round
your neck, perform the " Hundred Mortifications "
{Ce7it Mortifications) ; and then, over and above,
this little hymn to a fashionable tune. Choose a
good seat in church, where you may be conspicuous
and recognized as a pious person ; you will be
taken by the hand, introduced to a rich wife ; your
fortune, in short, will be made.
" But all this is on one condition — you must be
reasonable ; that is, you must extinguish your
reason. You are not yet completely corrected ;
you still presume occasionally to think for yourself.
This is naught. Look at yonder automaton ; there
is a model. You would say it was a man, and it
speaks and writes ; but never anything of itself —
always what it has learnt ; if it stirs, it is because a
spring has been touched.
• Delivered June 1st, 1843.
" Did men only know how superior machinery
is to life, they would no longer live, and all would
go on the better. How advantageous would it not
be for you to replace this feverish circulation of the
blood, this variable play of muscles and of fibres,
by those beautiful machines of steel and brass, the
regular play of whose wheels and pistons it is so
delightful to look upon."
Many are doing their utmost to approach this
beau-ideal. Could they attain it, and the meta-
morphosis be complete, it is plain what life would
become.
And what would become of science, of literature ?
In the first place, there would be some sciences
that would be branded as suspected ; and others,
considered less to be suspected, would be retained
as secret instruments. The mathematical and
physical sciences would find grace as the means of
machinery and of thaumaturgy ; grace for a time.
For after all, they are sciences, and would even-
tually be denounced. Astronomy, condemned long
.since with Galileo, would be defenceless. The
Anti-Copernicus, sold after sermon at the doors of
the church, would kill Copernicus. The four rules,
perhaps, might be retained ! And what more ?
A little Latin must be kept for divine service ;
but no Latin literature, except in editions arranged
by the Jesuits. Modern literature and philosophy
are heresies, to be banished utterly and altogether ;
and how much the more that East which is now
presenting itself to Christianity as a brother, and
under Christian forms. Haste to bury deep such
a science, and let its name never be breathed more.
No more science ; a little art may be spared, —
a devout art. Which, and of what epoch ? . . .
That of the middle age is too severe ; Raphael is
too pagan ; Poussin is a philosopher ; Champagne
is a Jansenist. Ha ! there is Mignard, and in liis
train a host of charming artists, who paint you in
the most gallant spirit allegories, emblems, delight-
fully coquettish devotional pieces, of the newest
invention. . . . With such a groundwork, form is
a secondary matter. Your strolling artists, who
decorate with their sign-post paintings the little
chapels of Bavaria and the Tyrol, are all that is
required.
I3ut why waste your breath speaking of art,
painting, sculpture ? There is a far different art,
which is not contented with the surface, but which
sinks within ; an art which takes the soft clay, a
softened, spoiled, corrupted soul, and which, instead
of fortifying, handles, kneads it, takes from it the
little elasticity that was left, and works the clay
into mud. Marvellous art, which renders penance
so sweet to sick souls that they must be ever con-
fessing— for confessing thus is sinning still.
This charming casuistry, were it not for its
squint, might be taken for jurisprudence, whose
bastard-sister she is ; but, on the other hand,
how infinitely more winning ! How much would
scowling jurisprudence be improved would she
only take pattern by the gentle arts of the other !
Who but would love a Papinian, refined by an
Escobar ? So tender would the heart of Justice at
length become, that she would loathe her sword,
and yield it up to these peaceful hands. Happy
change, from law to grace ! Law judges according
to merits. Grace selects, distinguishes, favours.
There would be the strict letter for some, grace for
others. In other words, law would be reversed.
Here, at length, we are freed from law, as we
have been from art and science. What is there
left. Religion 1
Alas ! she died the first of all ! Had she lived,
all might have been renewed, or, rather, nothing
would have perished. What is left is a machine
which simulates religion, which counterfeits worship,
just as in certain eastern countries the devout have
instruments which pray in their stead, imitating by
monotonous sounds the murmurings of prayers.
How low are we sunk now, how deep in death !
Thick clouds and dark, are around. . . .
Where, then, in this all-encircling night, where
is she who promised still to hold the torch for us
across the i-uins of empires and of religion ? where
is philosophy ? Pale light, without heat, her lamp
has gone out on the icy summit of abstraction.
Yet, she fancies she still lives, and, voiceless as she
is, asks pardon for living of theology, which is no
more alive than she.
Let us awake. Thanks to God, all this has been
but a dream !
I look on the world again ; it lives. The genius
of the modern age is true to itself. Checked, per-
haps, for a moment, it is not the less living, power-
ful, immense. 'Tis its colossal height which has
till now hindered it from heeding or knowing the
clamour of the crawling things at its feet.
It had sometliing else to do when, with one hand,
it was exhuming twenty religions, and, with the
other, measuring the heavens ; when day by day,
newly invented arts sprang into being from its
brow, like so many sparks cast off. . . . Yea, it
was thinking of something else, and is to be ex-
cused for not having understood that these mites
were constructing some box or other to shut up the
giant in.
The wisdom of the antique East, profound under
its infantile form, tells us that an unhappy Jin was
forced into a brazen jar ; rajtid, vast being, he who
with a wave of his wing could reach the pole, was
imprisoned in this jar, sealed down with a seal of
lead, and the jar sunk to the bottom of the sea.
In the first centux-y of his captivity, the prisoner
swore that he would gift liis deliverer with empire
— In the second he swore that he would bestow on
him all the treasures within the bowels of the earth
— In the third, he swore that if ever he were set
free he would issue forth in flames and ccmsume all
before him.
Who, tlien, are you ; to suppose that you can
seal the jar, to imagine that you can hold captive
the living genius of France ? Are you master, as in
the eastern tale, of the great seal of Solomon? That
seal had virtue in it ; it was inscribed with an
unspeakable name, which you will never learn.
There is no hand powerful enough to compress, I
do not say for three centuries, but for a single mo-
ment, the terrible elasticity of a spirit which in-
fluences all. Find me a rock heavy enough, a mass
of lead, of brass, . . . heap on it the whole globe,
'twill be as a feather's weight. And, were the
globe heavy enough, and had you narrowly searched
for and closed every means of escape, by some vent,
undiscovered by you, the flame would blaze up to
heaven.
Here, let us conclude. We have reached the
term of this course. We have studied first of all,
the living organism of the true middle age, next,
the sterile machinism of the spurious middle age,
which seeks to palm itself upon us ; and lastly, we
have characterized, and specifically described the
spirit of death and the spirit of life.
Had the professor of moral philosophy and his-
tory the right to handle the loftiest question be-
longing to the domain of history and of moral
philosophy 1
It was not his right only, but his duty. If any
one doubt it, it must be from ignorance, that here
where studies are completed, and instruction
mounts its last and highest stage, knowledge is,
not the knowledge of this or that, but, in brief,
absolute knowledge ; complete living knowledge, di-
recting the interests of life, rejecting its passions,
but borrowing its lights. To it every light be-
longs.
" Are not the questions of the present day to be
excepted ?" What is the present day ? Is it so
easy to isolate the past from it ? No time is out of
the sphere of knowledge. Even the future belongs
to it in those sciences which are advanced enough
to allow of our predicting the retui-n of pheno-
mena, as in the physical sciences, and as one day we
shall be enabled (conjecturally) in the historical.
This right, which the pulpit has claimed for
itself, with such violence as to make it a pretext
for personal attacks, the lay pulpit, the professorial
chair, will exercise here, peaceably, and with the
measure required by the differences of circum-
stances and of times.
If there be in the world one chair more than
another that has this right, it is the one which I
now occupy. That right is its birthright, and
they who know the price paid for it, will never dis-
pute its title.
In the tremendous convulsions of the sixteenth
century, when liberty ventured to set foot into the
world, and, bi'uised and bleeding stranger as she
was, seemed hardly able to live, our kings, maugre
all that was said against her, sheltered her here.
But the storm blew from the four quarters of
the heavens. Scholasticism asserted her claims ;
ignorance waxed furious ; falsehood spoke from the
seat of truth ; and soon, fanaticism, in arms, laid
siege to these doors : no doubt thinking, raging
madman, that it could slaughter thought, poniard
the mind !
Ramus was teacher here. The king, that king
Charles IX. too, felt for once a noble impulse, and
sent him word that he would find an asylum in the
Louvre. Ramus persevered. The only free spot
in France vvas this small floor, these six square
feet occupied by this chair. . . enough for cliair
and for tomb !
He made good this chair and this right, and so
was the salvation of the future. Here he spent his
blood, his life, his free heart. . . so that this chair,
transformed, might never be stone nor wood, but a
living tiling.
Be not surprised, then, that the enemies of li-
berty cannot face this chair; that they are troubled
THE CHAIR OF RAMUS,
21
as they look at it, are involuntarily agitated, and
betray themselves by inarticulate cries, by savage
sounds, which have nothing human in them.
They know that this chair has kept one gift
beyond their reach ; that were they in the ascen-
dant, and every voice hushed, it would speak of
itself. No terror of what was threatened from
without silenced it, either in 1572, or in 1793.
And even recently, its voice was heard whilst tu-
mult was raging, and it prosecuted its firm and
peaceful mission, whilst volleys of musketry were
pealing round.
How, then, could this chair of moral philosophy
be silent, when the gravest question of all public
morality came hither in living guise, and forced, if
I may so speak, the gates of this school ?
Unworthy should I have been ever again to
breathe a word from this spot, had I been mute,
when my friends were thi'eatened in every quarter
of France, and were upbraided with my teaching
and friendship. Though I quitted the University
when I accepted this chair, I do not the less re-
main in her in heart. I live in her through my
labours as teacher of philosophy and history, and
through the many arduous years I spent in her
with my pupils — cherished remembrances for ever,
both for them and for me.
In this common danger, I was bound to let them
hear a voice they knew, and to tell them that, what-
ever may happen, there will ever go forth, from
this chair, a claim for the independence of history,
which is the judge of time, and for that grandest of
the liberties of the human mind, philosophy.
I know that there are, who, caring neither for
philosophy, nor for liberty, give us scant thanks for
having broken silence . . . peaceful folk, friends of
order, who find no fault with those who are having
their throats cut, but with those who cry out.
When the cry of " help" is raised, they protest from
their windows at such a noise at unseemly hours,
and at quiet people having their rest disturbed.
These systematic sleepers, in their search for a
powerful narcotic, have done religion the honour to
believe that she was the opiate wished for, and they
have seized on her, who, if the world were dead,
could awaken the dead to life, as a means of going
to sleep.
Skilful in other matters are they, and may well
be excused their ignorance of religion, as they find
none in their heart. And so there hiive not been
wanting those who have rushed to them, saying,
" We are Religion ! "
Religion ! How fortunate that you are living
here. . . . But who are you, good people ; whence
come you ? how did you get in ? The sentry of
France kept not good watch that night on the fron-
tier, for you certainly were not seen.
From the countries which make books, there have
come to us books ; foreign literatures, foreign phi-
losophies, which we have accepted. Tlie countries
which do not make books, anxious not to remain in
the rear, have sent us men; the invaders have crept
in, one by one.
Good people, who travel by night, I had hap-
pened to see you by day-time. I remember you
but too well, as I do those who brought you. It
was in 1815. Your name is — the foreigner.
You took good care, luckily, to prove your title to
the name at once. Instead of restraining yourselves
and whispering, as one commonly does when one
enters by stealth, you made a great noise, insulted,
threatened. And, meeting with no reply, you lifted
the hand; on whom, wretched men ? — on the law!
How could you think that this law, buffeted by
you, could go on pretending not to see you I
The alarm was giveu ; who dares say that it was
too soon ?
Was it too soon when, reviving what had not
been seen for three hundred years, the pulpit was de-
secrated by defamatory attacks on individuals, and
calumnies uttered from the altar ?
Was it too soon, when, in that province of ours
which contains the largest number of Protestants,
you interfered with the Protestant dead ?
Was it too soon, when immense associations were
forming, one of which alone in Paris numbers fifty
thousand persons ?
Do you speak of liberty ? Speak next of equality !
Can there be equality between you and us ? you are
the leaders of formidable associations ; we are soli-
tary men.
You have forty thousand pulpits to speak for you,
willingly or unwillingly. You have a hundred
thousand confessionals, from which you move and
influence all family life. You hold in your hand
that which is the basis of the family, (and of the
world,) you hold the Mother ; the child is only
an accessary. Ah ! what can the father do when
she comes home from church or confessional as one
lost, throws herself into his arms, and exclaims^ —
" I am damned !" You may be sure that to pacify
her alarmed imagination, he will consent the next
day to give you up his son. — Twenty thousand
children in your little seminaries; two hundred thou-
sand, presently, in the schools under your influence!
Millions of women who only breathe as you direct !
And we, what are we opposed to these vast forces?
A voice, no more ... a voice to call out to France.
She is now warned, and must take her own course
She sees and feels, however, the net in which they
thought to enmesh her in her sleep.
To all sound hearts, one last word ! To all, lay-
men or priests (and may a free voice reach them in
the depths of their bondage !) — may they all aid us
by courageous words or by silent sympathy, and
may all bless from their hearts and their altars, the
holy crusade we have begun for God and liberty !
[From the day this lecture was delivered, the
situation of affairs changed. The Jesuits published
at Lyons their second pamphlet*; to explain the
drift of which, we must go back a little.
* This time, it is no longer a canon, but a cure, who
affixes his name to it. The appeal made by the press to the
inferior clergy had given great alarm, and in this new pam-
phlet the strongest desire is visible to come to terms witti
them. Of the two demands made by the working clergy
(les cures deaservants), namely, the suspension of the power
of removal (I'inamovibilite) and appeal to law, they admit the
first, as it isolates the cures from the bishop, but dread the
last; since appeal to law, whilst limiting the bishop's
authority, would yet strengthen it, and alter the bishopric
into a regular system of administration, instead of leaving
it, as it is, a weak, violent tyranny, hateful to the clergy,
and therefore obliged to throw itself for support on the
Jesuits and on Rome. See the Simple Coup-d'-(Eil, p. 1 70 —
178. The hand of the Jesuits is visible throughout the
pamphlet. No one can mistake it ; and I could instance, if
need were, proof upon proof. We have just seen how easily
they make their peace with the cures at the expense of the
bishop, agreeing that, after all, "The bishop is a mortal,"
&c. The pamphlet speaks of all the states of Europe, i
A whole work niiglit be written on their manceu-
vres for the last few months, on their tactics in
Switzerland and in France.
Their starting point is their great success during
the winter, when they carried so quickly the small
cantons, seized Lucerne, and occupied St. Gothard,
as they have long done the Valais and the Simplon.
Great military positions ; but, beware of vertigo.
France, seen from those Alpine summits, must have
seemed small to them ; smaller, apparently, than
the lake of the Four cantons.
'The signals have been transmitted from the Alps
to Fourvieres, and from Fourvieres (Lyons), to
Paris. The moment seemed propitious. Our good
France slept, or seemed to sleep. They wrote to
each other (as did formerly the Jews from Portu-
gal :) " Come quickly! the land is good; the people
simple ; all will be ours."
For a year they were tampering with us, and
found no limits to our patience. They attacked in-
dividuals, railed at the government ; but nothing
stirred. They struck ; not a word followed. They
went on seeking out for some sensitive point on the
hardened cuticle.
And then, and then, they were fired with extra-
ordinary courage. They thi-ew aside the staff, took
to the sword, the huge two-handed sword, and, with
this gothic weapon, aimed a heavy blow, the great
blow of the Monopoly (charging the University with
a monopoly of education).
The dignity of the University not allowing her to
reply, others faced the attack, and, with the press
to aid, and crossed against true steel, the famous
two-handed sword turned out to be a wooden sword
after all.
Great was the alarm on this, brisk the retreat,
and out came the naive ejaculation of fear : —
"Alas ! how can you kill us ? We no longer exist!"
But, if you no longer exist, who wrote that huge
libel of yours ? — " Ah ! sir ! it was the police played
us that trick . . . no, no, no, we mistake, it was the
University, which, in order to ruin us, mfamously
defamed herself*."
Recovering, however, from their first fright,
feeling that they were not killed, and, looking back,
they saw that no one was following them. , . .
Hereupon they halted, stood firm, and again un-
sheathed the sword. . . .
Forthwith a new libel, but quite diff'erent from
the first, and full of strange confessions such as no
one ever expected. It may be summed up as fol-
lows : —
" Learn to know us, and, first of all, learn that in
except those under the influence of the Jesuits, which are
either hardly named, or not at all. AVe find (p. 85) the author
betraying himself by saying, " The name of Jesuit, so
honourable everywhere, &rc. ! " No one in France, not even
a Jesuit, would have written this. The pamphlet must
have been composed in Savoy or at Fribourg.
• It is certain (strange as it may seem) that they com-
mitted all kind of follies on their first alarm— it was an old
woman, a beadle, a carrier of holy water, who had whispered
this about.
our previous work we lied. We spoke of liberty of
teaching ; which means that the clergy ought to be the
only teachers *. We spoke of the liberty of th^ press ;
meaning for us alone ; it is a lever which the priest
ought to avail himself off . As to manufacturing
and commercial liberty, to get possession of trade of
all kinds is one of the duties of the Church J .
Liberty of worship ; not a word on't. 'Tis an in-
vention of the Apostate, Julian. . . . Mixed
marriages we will no longer suffer; such marriages
were contracted at the court of Catharine de Me-
dicis on the eve of St. Bartholomew § .
" Beware, beware ; we are the stronger. We ad-
vance a surprising but unanswerable proof of this,
namely, that all the powers of Europe are against
us II . Save and except two or three petty states,
the whole world reprobates us."
Strange, that confessions of the kind should have
escaped them ! We had said nothing near so strong.
In the first pamphlet, we had noticed signs of a
wandering mind ; but to hear such confessions,
such a lie given by themselves to-day to their words
of yesterday! This is a terrible judgment from
God. . . , Let us humble ourselves.
Such is the fate of having taken the holy name
of liberty in vain. You supposed that it was a
word to be pronounced with impunity, though not
felt at heart. . . You made furious efforts to force
this word up from your chest, and it has happened
to you as to the false prophet, Balaam, who cursed,
when he thought to bless ; you would still lie, would
still exclaim Liberty! as in your first pamphlet, and
you cry. Death to Liberty ! All that you have de-
nied, you are now crying out at the top of your
lungs to the passers by.]
* Teaching belongs to the clergy by right divine . . . the
University has usurped the functions. . . . Either the Uni-
versity or Catholicism must give way, &c. p. 104.
+ To avail themselves of t/ie press does not mean making
use of the press merely, since the writers of the pamphlet
acknowledge their efforts to hinder the sale of Protestant
works. See note, p. 81.
t Ibidem, p. 191. If we would know the fate of all in-
dustry under such influences, we have but to turn our eyes
to the misery of the greater number of the countries where
it prevails ; the one where it reigns without rival — the Papal
states — is a desert.
§ The Jesuit who wrote page 82 to page 85, inclusive,
and, above all, the note to page 83, is one who will be heard
of again ; he is still young and ignorant, that is plain
enough ; but he has a touch both of Jacques Clement and
of Marat within him.
These pages, more violent than all that has been con-
demned in the most violent political pamphlets, seem got
together to exasperate the fanaticism of our peasants of the
south. Indeed, the v,ork was destined for the south alone,
not a single copy having been sent to Paris. In the note
alluded to, the bellicose Jesuit passes his forces in review,
and ends with this sinister phrase : " Huguenot mar-
riages WERE CONTRACTED IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY,
TOO, AT THE COURT OP CATHERINE DE MeDICIS . . . and
they ended in civil war." — Simple Coup-d'ceil, &c. p. 83.
II A good third of the pamphlet is taken up with proving
this.
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
23
M. QUINET'S LECTUEES.
INTRODUCTION.
The emotion caused by a mei-e philosophical dis-
cussion cannot be ascribed to any person in parti-
cular. The impression produced has been deep
only because it has made manifest, along with anew
phasis of the public mind, a danger, in the ex-
istence of which otherwise it would have been
difficult to believe. Who does not perceive that in
future these discussions are destined to enlarge
their sphere ? They will emerge from the schools,
and enter into the political world. Nothing is use-
less which can serve to affix to them from the
outset their true character.
I have been impelled into this discussion by
two reasons : first, by the provocation of reiterated
violence ; secondly, by the persuasion that the
question at issue was, though nominally the Uni-
versity, the riglit of thought, religious and philo-
sophical liberty ; that is to say, the very prin-
ciple of modern science and society.
After having had recourse to violence as long as
they were able, the adversaries of the freedom of
thought appear now in the character of martyrs ;
they publicly offer up prayers in the church for the
persecuted Jesuits ; but we cannot suffer them to
remain behind this mask. Why were they not
content with calumniating 1 Never, for my part,
would I have dreamt of disturbing their repose.
But they were not satisfied ; they courted the com-
bat. And now that they have met the enemy, they
complain of having been injured. During several
days we beheld, at the foot of our chairs, our
modern leaguers shouting, hissing, vociferating ;
and the worst of it is, that all this was done in the
name of liberty. For the sake of maintaining the
independence of opinion, they began by stifling the
examination of opinion.
Little by little, instruction and science were
placed in a state of siege ; we waited until assailed
by outrage, in order to prove that it was necessary
to carry the war into the country of the assailants.
From the day when we began the struggle, we
made up our minds to accept battle under what-
ever form it might be offered.
One thing has facilitated this task for me — the
knowledge, namely, that such a situation was not
personal. For a long time, in fact, we had seen
an artificial fanaticism turning to its own account
the beliefs of the sincere ; religious liberty de-
nounced as an impious doctrine ; Protestantism
driven to madness by unheard-of outrages ; the
pastors of Alsace obliged to calm, by a collective
declaration, their communes, astonished by so many
savage insults ; an incredible decree, obtained by
surprise, which took away one half of the country
churches from their legitimate proprietors ; a
priest, assisted by his parishioners, casting to the
winds the bones of the Protestants, and this impiety
left insolently unpunished *; the bust of Luther,
with many shameful circumstances, torn from a
Lutheran town; latent war, organized in this quiet
province, and the tribune silent concerning these
strange doings : on the other hand, the Jesuits
twice as numerous under the Revolution as they
were under the Restoration, and reviving, along
with themselves, the maxims of the society, inde-
scribable infamies, which Pascal even would not
have dared to describe in order to combat, and which
are claimed as the proper food of all the semina-
ries and confessors of France ; the bishops, one by
one, turning against the authority by which they
were appointed ; and in spite of so many treache-
ries, a singular facility of procuring fresh ones;
the inferior clergy in absolute servitude, a new
proletariat beginning to take courage to utter com-
plaints; and in the midst of all these things, when
wisdom should have suggested a defensive attitude,
a morbid ardour of provocation, a fever of ca-
lumny sanctified by the Cross— such was the gene-
ral situation.
The ground, morever, was well prepared; society
had been worked upon for many years in its
heights and in its depths, in the workshop,
in the schools, through the heart and through
the head. Opinion seemed to succumb on all
occasions. Accustomed to retire, why should
it not take another backward step ? From the
outset, Jesuitism found itself naturally allied with
Carlism, in the same spirit of intrigue and of
painted decrepitude. What St. Simon calls that
froth of nobility, could not fail to mingle with this
leaven. As to one portion of the bom-geoisie, in
* The Consistory of Paris, in alluding to the same fact,
in a solemn Inauguration speech, pronounced in the presence
of the minister of public worship, makes use of the same
expression that I do, " the unpunished profanation of our
tombs." See Inauguration de VEglise Evangelique de la
Redemption, printed by order of the consistory, p. 19.
Some neo-Catholic writers have thought fit, in spite of this,
to bring my words under the notice of the law. These words
were written under the impression produced by a summary
judgment which declared the conduct of the accused ec-
clesiastic blameable. A subsequent decision has fully ac-
quitted him. According to his defenders, he did not scatter
the bones of the Reformed to the winds ; he only looked
upon the dust in the bottom of the tombs, and pushed
back a little the Protestant communion-table. I respect
the decision of those courts, but think at the same time
that they are not judges of the piety or impiety of actions.
Since when has it been sufficient for a priest to be in exact
conformity with the requirements of the correctional police if
Without disobeying them is it not possible to wound that
which is most sacred in the religious conscience? It is not
the correctional tribunal which punishes impiety, but ec-
clesiastical authority. Our adversaries always confound
police and religion.
24
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
its solicitude to mimic a factitious remnant of aris-
toci'acy, it was quite prepared to consider as a mark
of good taste, the imitation of religious, literary,
and social dotage.
The time accordingly seemed good for sur-
prising those who were thought to slumber. It
was strongly felt, that after so much declamation,
it would be a decisive blow if in the College of
France the liberty of speech and of instruction
could be crushed. If this result could be obtained
by a coup de main, it might be represented as
the effect of a sudden manifestation of public
opinion; such a triumph was worth the trouble of
emerging from the catacombs, and appearing be-
fore the public. Appear, accordingly, they did, and
repented as soon as they appeared ; for we under-
stood the full purport of the meditated act of vio-
lence and the critical nature of the time ; we
depended, for our defence, not on the power of our
eloquence, but on our determination to concede
nothing, and on the enlightened conscience of our
audience. All that a phrensy, sincere or simulated,
was able to effect, was to smother for a time our
voices, and thus to give to public opinion an oppor-
tunity of declaring itself; after which these new
missionaries of religious liberty retreated, with
fury in their hearts, and full of shame for having
exposed themselves in the full glare of day, and
ready to deny themselves ; as, in fact, they did
deny themselves the very next day.
This defeat was entirely owing to the power
of opinion and of the press, to the upright feelings
of the new generation, which does not understand
such artifices. If the same follies are repeated,
we shall receive the same support. The question,
in some respects, concei'ns us no longer ; it re-
mains to be seen how the state will treat it when it
falls in its way. It would certainly be very con-
venient to sit down between the two camps, to
attack Ultra-montanism with one hand and to
flatter it with the other ; but such a situation
would be full of peril. A decision on one side or
the other must be come to. It is not for me to
deny the power of Jesuitism and of the intei-ests
connected with it, a power only beginning to be
felt ; and which regains silently in the darkness
what it loses in open day. The idea of an alliance
with it therefore may present itself; the attempt
may be made to rest at least one foot of the throne
on this ground. If the coalition be sincere, it will
be powerful. But it must be avowed ; otlierwise
it may happen that the consequence of over-
cunning may be the opposition both of the Ultra-
montanists and of their antagonists.
It is strange that such questions as these should
have taken society by surprise, and that no warn-
ing voice was raised in the tribune. Under the
Restoration this was the watch-tower from which
the sign of coming storms was descried afar off,
and whence the counti-y was forewarned of ap-
proaching dangers long before they were imminent.
Why has the tribune lost this privilege ? I begin
to fear that those four hundred statesmen conceal
one from the other the country they inhabit.
This is a more serious matter than some may
imagine. It concerns a throne and a dynasty.
I know of men who go about daily saying — " There
.ire no Jesuits. Where are the Jesuits 1" By
dissembling the question, they only prove how
horoughly they comprehend its bearing.
The religious re-action which is attempted to
be turned to the advantage of a sect is not, in
fact, without an answering voice in society. What
man is there who has not been, as it were, wan-
tonly disgusted with political interests and hopes ?
Having seen during twelve years, what are called
the heads of parties employing all their talents in
mutually aiding each other to deceive the pub-
lic, who has not for a time been disgusted with
this corruption that has at last become a mat-
ter of habit, and turned his mind towards
Him who alone intrigues not, deceives not,
lies not ? This religious disposition is inevita-
ble. It will be fruitful and salutary. Unhap-
pily, every body begins already to trade upon
this revulsion ; some even avow that this restored
Divinity may be an excellent instrument in the
hands of the powers that be. What a piece of good
fortune would it, indeed, prove for many a states-
men, if proud, warlike, revolutionary, philosophical
France, weary at length with all things, even with
herself, were at length to consent, abandoning all
her political fervour, to tell her beads in the dust
by the side of Italy, Spain, and South America !
We are told, you attack Jesuitism as a precau-
tionary measure. Why do you separate it from the
rest of the clergy ? I separate that only which
desires to be separated. I develop the maxims of
that order, which re])resents the combinations of
political religion. Those who, without bearing
the name of the order, govern themselves by the
same maxims, will easily apportion to themselves
their share of what I say ; as for the others, an
opportunity is afforded them of denying the am-
bitious, of regaining the misled, of condemning
the calumniators.
It is high time that we should know, whether
the spirit of the French revolution is nothing more
than a hackneyed word, which may publicly and
officially be despised. Does Catholicism, by placing
itself under the banner of Jesuitism, desire to
recommence a war which has already been so
fatal to it ? Will it be the friend or the enemy of
France ?
The worst thing that could happen to it would
be to persist in showing that its profession of
faith is not only different from, but inimical to the
profession of faith of the state. In the institutions
she has founded on the equality of all existing
creeds, France professes, teaches the unity of
Christianity under the dogmas of particular
churches. This is her confession, as it is written
in the sovereign law ; — every Frenchman belongs
legally to the same church under different names ;
we henceforth recognize here no schismatics, no
heretics, but those who, denying every other church
but their own, all authority but their own, de-
sire to impose it on all the others, to reject all
the others, without discussion, and who dare to
say : Out of my church, there is no salvation ;
whereas the state says precisely the contrary. It
was not from caprice that the law abolished a
state religion. France could not adopt as its
representative this Ultra-montanism, which, by its
principle of exclusion, is diametrically opposed to
that social creed and that religious universality
which are inscribed in the constitution as the result
not only of the Revolution, but of the whole of
modern history. From which it follows that, in
order that things should be otherwise, one of two
LIBERTY OF DISCUSSION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS.
25
things must happen, either that France should
renounce her pi)litical and social communion, or
that Catholicism should, in truth, be universal,
and should comprehend what it now contents
itself with accui-sing.
Some, who, it would appear, see further than
their neighbours, entertain, it must be confessed, a
singular hope ; they observe what is going on
among the dissenting persuasions, and by dwelling
on the intestine agitations of the Anglican and
Greek churches, and of Protestantism in Germany,
they persuade themselves that England, Prussia,
Gei-many, and even Russia, are secretly inclining
towards them, and will some day, with their eyes
shut, pass over to Catholicism as they understand it.
Nothing, however, can be more puerile than such
a belief. To believe that schism is nothing but a
fancy of ninety millions of men, which can be put
an end to by a new fancy of orthodoxy, is a sort
of madness common with those who appear to be
alone in the confidence of Providence in its govern-
ment of history. If Protestantism is accommo-
dating itself to certain points of the Catholic
doctrine, does any one really persuade liimself
that it is simply in order to deny itself, and to give
itself up witiiout reciprocal conditions ? It as-
similates to itself, it is true, divers portions of the
primeval tradition ; but, by this labour of con-
ciliation, it is bringing about absolutely the con-
trary of what those among us desire, who are
dreaming only of excluding, interdicting, anathe-
matizing. It expands itself in proportion as those
on our side narrow their position ; and if ever such
a conversion takes place, I predict that our Ultra-
montanists will be more embarrassed with their
converts than they are now with the schismatics.
They ask for liberty in order to destroy liberty.
Grant them this weapon ; I do not wisli to see
them deprived of it; it will recoil upon themselves.
Throw open for them, if you will, every barrier ;
it is the way to bring the question to an issue, and
a way which I do not dislike. Let them be every-
where ; let them invade every department ; and
ten years will not elapse before they are driven
away, for the fortieth time, along with the govern-
ment, which has been or seemed to be their
accomplice ; it is for you to decide if this is what
you want to accomplish.
In this struggle which is attempted to be excited
between Ultra-montanism and the French Revo-
lution, wherefore is the first always and necessarily
vanquished ? Because the French Revolution, in
its principle, is more truly Christian than Ultra-
montanism ; because the sentiment of univer-
sal religion pervades France rather than Rome.
The law evolved from the French Revolution is
comprehensive enough to assimilate the lives of
tliose whom religious sects kept separated ex-
teriorly. It has conciliated in spirit and in truth
those whom Ultra-montanism desired eternally to
separate ; it has made brothei*s of those wiiora
she made sectarians ; it has raised what she con-
demns ; it has consecrated what she proscribes ;
it has substituted an evangelical alliance where she
would have nothing but the anathema of the old
law ; it has destroyed the names of Huguenots
and Papists, and allowed only that of Christian to
remain ; it has pleaded the cause of the people, of
the humble, when she spoke only for the princes
and the powerful of the earth. That is to sav, the
political law, however imperfect it may be, has
been found to be more in conformity with the
Gospel than those doctors who aff'ect alone to
speak in the name of the Gospel. By drawing
together, blending, uniting in the state the various
members of the family of Christ, it has displayed
more intelligence, more love, more Christian feel-
ing, than those who, for three centuries, have been
content to say Raca to half Christendom.
As long as political France preserves this po-
sition in the world, she will be inexpugnable to all
the efforts of Ultra-montanism, because, religiously
speaking, she is the superior; she is more Christian,
because nearer to the promised unity ; more
Catholic, because her expanded principle includes
the Greek and the Latin churches, the Lutheran
and the Calvinistic, the Protestant and the Roman
within the same law, the same name, the same
life, the same city of alliance. France has been
the first to plant her banner, without the limits of
any sect, in the living idea of Christianity. This
constitutes the greatness of the Revohition ; she
will fall only if, unfaithful to this universal dogma,
she enters, as some persons invite her to do, into
the sectarian policy of Ultra-montanism.
To support so much pride, show me a single
point of the earth where a strictly Catholic policy
is not combated and overthrown by facts. In Eu-
rope, in the East, in the two Americas, it is sufficient
to raise this banner to introduce immediately both
moral and physical decay. When France, in the
beginning of this century, governed the world ; was
it in the name of Ultra-montanism ? Was it Ultra-
montanism that conquered the world ? Even Aus-
tria does not adopt this flag ; she lets her Church
loose only at a distance fi-om herself, to complete
the prostration of her conquered provinces. Italy,
Spain, Portugal, Paraguay, Poland, Ireland, Bo-
hemia, all these people victims of the same policy —
is it their fate that you envy ? Let us speak plainly.
Here are holocausts sufficient to sacrifice on an altar
which is no longer the salvation of any one.
LECTURE THE FIEST *.
ON LIBERTY OF DISCUSSION IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.
Divers circumstances compel me to explain the
meaning I attach to the words, liberty of dis-
* Delivered May 10th, 1843. — I have noticed expressions
of sympathy among my auditory as long as the attempts at
interruption were continued.
cussion, as regards public teaching. I wish
to do so with moderation ; calmly, but with the
most perfect frankness. So long as attacks came
from a distance, even when I had fallen under
the anathema of episcopal charges, and of holy
2G
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
chairs, it was possible, and perhaps decent, to pre-
serve silence ; but when insult came and showed
its face here, within these precincts, at the very foot
of these pacific chairs, it became necessary to speak.
I am told that scenes of disorder are meditated,
and are to commence to-day, during my address,
{Derisive laughter. Applause.) I should not give
credence to this if I did not know, from what has just
taken place during the lecture of a man whose every
sentiment I share, of my dearest friend, M. Miche-
let, what kind of liberty we are to expect. Can
it be true, that persons come here for the sole pur-
pose of insulting us incognito, in case we should
venture to think differently from them ? Where
are we then ? Are we in a theatre ; and how
long is it, since I, for my part, undertook to please,
individually, every spectator, on pain of infamy ? In
truth, that is a sordid task which I did not accept.
Do you think that instruction consists in flattering
the dominant idea of evei-y man, without ever
coming in collision with a single passion, a single
prejudice ? Silence would be a thousand times
better. In entering here, let us remember that
we are entering the College of Finance, that is
to say, the very domains of discussion and free
examination ; that this asylum of liberty is con-
fided to us all, and that it is my sacred duty not
to allow this hereditary character of independence
i to diminish or to change.
If there be any persons here who are animated
against me by an especial feeling of hatred, what,
I ask, do they expect ? what do they want ? Do
they hope, by menaces, to modify my words, or
to stop my mouth ? I should fear that the con-
trary would be the case, if my high sense of the
duty I am fulfilling did not give me the power to
persevere in the moderation which I believe to be
the sign of truth. Do they think, since it is best
to speak plainly, that their abuse will drive me to
despair, or that I can do nothing better than make
reprisals ? If so, they are mistaken ; I shall even go
so far as to say, that I consider the violence of abuse
a sign of sincerity, because, with a little more cal-
culation, their accusations would have been better
chosen. Are the opinions I have elsewhere publish-
ed, the reasons why I am to be persecuted here ? I
am not sorry to have this opportunity of declaring
that whatever I have written, up to this day, I be-
lieve, I think, I sustain still ; whatever opinion
may be formed on this subject, no one can deny
that I have remained one and consistent with
myself. Or, is it my general spirit of liberty in
religious matters ? I shall presently come to that
point ; but if you want a profession of faith, I be-
lieve, as the state teaches us, in a fundamental law,
evolved from fifty years of revolutions and of trials,
that all sincere communions in this country partake
of the living Spirit of God. I do not believe that out
of my church there is no salvation. In fine, is it
the manner in which I announced the subject of
i my course of lectures ? But you are yourselves
I witness ; was it possible to do so with less of bit-
terness, more of moderation ? It is the question then
i itself which they would like to stifle. Yes, let us be
I frank, it is this name of Jesuits which does all the
j harm ; it is for touching on the origin, on the
spirit of the Jesuits, that even before I have
! opened my mouth, I am accused by people who
I never forgive.
i VVhy, it is asked, speak of the Society of Jesus
in a course of lectures on the literature of the
South 1 What aflinity can there be between things
so opposite to each other ? I should be very unfor-
tunate, and have strangely wasted my time, if you
had not already perceived in all its extent this indis-
soluble affinity. At the end of the sixteenth century,
in Spain, and, above all, in Italy, public opinion was
effaced. Writers, poets, artists, disappear one
after the other ; instead of the ardent, audacious
generation that preceded it, the new men stagnate
in an atmosphere of death ; we hear no more of the
heroic innovations of the Campanellas, the Brunos :
we have, instead, a honied poetry, an insipid prose,
that exhales a kind of faint sepulchral odour. But,
whilst everything perishes in the national genius,
behold a little society, that of the Jesuits, grows
visibly, insinuates itself everywhere in the perishing
states, feeds upon what is left of life in the heart
of Italy, draws strength and nourishment from the
substance of this great partitioned body ; and when
so great a phenomenon appears in the world, in-
fluencing all other intellectual facts, and becoming
their principle, I must not venture to speak of it !
When, pursuing my subject, I come into immediate
contact with so powei'ful an institution, which in-
fluences every mind, which comprehends, epitomizes
the whole system of the South, I must pass on and
avert my eyes ! What remains then for me to do \
To confine myself to a few sonnets, and to the
amorous mythology of those periods of decay 1
Suppose it even so ; in spite of ourselves we
could not avoid the question. For, after having
studied these miserable things, thei-e would still
remain to describe the deleterious influence which
was one of their most manifest causes ; and the
only difference would be, if the question of Jesuit-
ism were postponed, that I should invert the order,
and place at the end what ought to have been at the
beginning ; to study the death of a people, if we en-
deavour to penetrate its causes, is as important as
to study its life.
At least, it is added, you might have exhibited
the eff'ect without the cause, letters and policy
without the spirit that swayed them, Italy without
Jesuitism, the dead without the living. No, I
could not, and, moreover, I will not.
What ! I should discover, by careful observa-
tion, all Southern Europe exhaust itself in the
development and the formation of this establish-
ment, languish and perish under this influence ;
and I, whose business it is, at this moment espe-
cially, to study the inhabitants of the South, should
say nothing of the cause which makes them
perish ! (Murmurs.) I should quietly behold my
country invited into an alliance which others have
so dearly atoned for; and I should not say, " Take
care; you have the benefit of the experience of
others; — the most unfortunate nations in Europe,
those which are the least in ci'edit, the least in
authority, those which seem the most abandoned
by God, are those in which the society of Loyola
has its focus ! " {Murmurs, stamping of the feet,
cries ; for some minutes the speaker's voice is
drowned.) Do not yield to the impulse; example
shows that it is fatal ; do not sit under this sha-
dow ; it has put to sleep and poisoned, during
two centuries, both Spain and Italy. (Tumult, cries,
hisses, applause.) I ask you if, from these general
facts, 1 may not draw the consequence, — what be-
comts of all instruction in such matters ?
LIBERTY OF DISCUSSION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS.
27
I But my astonishment redoubles. For wliat or-
I der, for what society is this strange privilege
i claimed ? Whom do you desire to place beyond the
reach of discussion and observation ? Can it be the
' living clergy of France ? Or can it be one of those
: pacific and modest communions which require pro-
i tection against the violence of an intolerant niajor-
1 ity ? No, it is a society which (we shall presently
I see whether with or without rejison) has been at
I different times expelled from all the states of Eu-
j rope, which the pope himself has condemned, which
France has rejected, which does not exist in the
eyes of the state, which rather is held to be legally
I dead in the public law of our country; and it is this
remnant without a name, which hides itself, shrinks
from sight, grows by denying itself; it is this which
we are not permitted to study, to consider, to ana-
lyze, in its origin and its history ! Every other
order has confessedly had its time of decline, of
corruption, has been accommodated in its spirit to
a particular epoch, after which it has given way to
others, pretty nearly in the same manner as political
societies, states, peoples, which have all had their
fixed day and their destiny ; and the Jesuit society
is the only one of which the faults, the phases of
decline, the signs of decrepitude, may not he pointed
out ; it is blasphemy to contrast its time of degra-
dation with its time of greatness, because this is to
attribute to it the vicissitudes common to every
other establishment ; to doubt of its immutability
is almost an effort of courage. Whither will this
road lead us ? Are we quite sure that this is the
road of the France of July ? {Applause.)
I will speak my whole mind. Yes, in this auda-
city there is something that pleases and attracts
me ; it seems that I now comprehend and exhibit
the greatness of this society better than all its apolo-
gists ; for they would that I should not speak of it;
and I on the contrary maintain that this society has
heen so powerful, its organization so ingenious and
full of life, its influence so long and so universal,
that it is impossible not to. speak of it, whatever
subject we treat of towards the end of the revival of
letters, — poetry, art, morality, politics, institutions.
I maintain, that after having seized upon the whole
substance of the South, it alone during a whole
century has remained living in the bosom of these
dead societies. At this very moment, torn in frag-
ments, trampled or crushed by so many solenm
edicts, it does not argue a little genius and a small
courage to come to life under our eyes, half to raise
itself, to speak as a master when it has scarcely
emerged from the dust, to provoke, to menace, todefy
anew intelligence and common sense. If the world,
after having extirpated the Jesuits, is in a humour
to allow itself again to be mastered, they are right
to make the trial ; if they succeed it will be the
greatest mii-acle of modern times. At all events,
they obey their law, their condition of existence,
their destiny ; I do not blame them, it is in their
character. All will go well if, on the other hand,
we all preserve our own. Yes, this reaction, in spite
of the intolerance of which it boasts, does not dis-
please me; it will be useful to the future, if every
one does his duty : that is to say, if science, philo-
sophy, human intelligence, being provoked and sum-
moned, accept the great defiance. Perhaps we were
about to betake ourselves to slumber in the posses-
sion of a certain number of ideas, which some cai-ed
no longer to increase ; it is good that truths should
from time to time be disputed, for man is thus in-
cited to acquire new ones ; if he is left in undis-
turbed possession of his inheritance he does not in-
crease it, but allows it to diminish. They accuse
us of being too bold ; I accept a portion of the re-
proach ; only I will say, that instead of being too
bold, I begin to fear that we have been too timid.
Compare in fact for a moment the state of instruc-
tion in our country and in the universities of the
despotic governments of the North. Was it not in
a catholic country, in a catholic imiversity, at Mu- 1
nich, that Schelling developed during thirty years |
with impunity in his chair, with unceasing boldness, |
the idea of that new Christianity, of that new
church, which transforms both past and present ?
Is it not in a despotic country that Hegel with still
greater independence has revived all the questions
which relate to dogmas l And there it is not only
theories and mysteries that are freely discussed by
philosophy, but even the letter of the Old and New
Testaments, to which the same disinterested spirit
of criticism is applied as to Greek and Roman
philology.
Such is the life of instraction even in despotic
states. Whatever can put man on the track of truth
is permitted, allowed ; and we, in a free country,
on the morrow of a revolution, what have we done ?
Have we used, abused that philosophical liberty
which the time granted us, and of which nobody-
could deprive us ? Have we unfurled the banner
of philosophy and of free discussion as far as it was
lawful so to do ? Assuredly not ; as everybody be-
lieved that this independence was for ever conquer-
ed, nobody was in a hurry to make full use of it ;
the most daring questions were adjourned; it was
desired by excess of care to remove every occasion
of difference. Philosophy, which might have been
beti-ayed into overweening pride by the triumph of
July, has, on the contrary, bent herself to a humility
that has surprised all the world ; and this humble
situation, in which at least we expected to find peace,
is the refuge which they refuse to leave us. Must
we concede, retire further ? Why a single back-
ward step might throw us out of our age. What
must we do then ? Advance. (Applmise.) For my
part I thank those who provoke us to action and
life. Who knows that we should not have ended
by sitting down in a sterile and false repose 1 Many
thought that the .alliance of belief and knowledge
had at last been consummated, the goal attained,
the problem solved. But no ! our adversaries were
right ; the time of repose has not yet come ; the
struggle is useful when we engage in it in good fiiith ;
it is in these eternal struggles of knowledge and be-
lief, that man raises himself to a supei'ior belief, to a
superior knowledge. Why should we be relieved
from the condition of the holy combat imposed upon
all our predecessors ? The time will come when
those who so violently dispute, will repose together ;
that time has not yet come ; until then it is right
that each man should perform his task and should
combat in his own way, as the alliance has been
broken on one side.
Once more 1 thank my adversaries ; they follow
their mission, which until now has been, by an im-
mutable contradiction, to provoke, to spur on the
human mind, to compel it to advance further every
time it begins to jjause, or to be satisfied with the
tranquil possession of a portion only of truth. Man
is more timid than he seems ; if ho is not opposed
28
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
he is too accommodating. Is not this his history
during the whole of the middle age ? And this
history, this perpetual struggle, which constantly
reanimates and excites him, has it not almost en-
tirely taken place in the very localities where we
now are, on this heroic mountain of Genevieve ?
Why do you wonder at the combat ? We are on
the very field of battle. Was it not here, in these
chairs, that from Abelard to Ramus appeared all
those who served the cause of the independence of
the human mind, when it was most contested ? That
is our tradition: the spirit of those men is with us.
As the objections, which they trampled under foot,
and which were believed to be for ever buried with
them, re-appear, let us do as they did ; let us even
carry the banner of free discussion still further.
{Applause.)
At the point at which we have arrived, there is a
fundamental question, which lies at the bottom of
every difficulty, and on which I desire to explain my-
self so clearly, that no confusion shall remain in the
minds of those who hear me. What, according to the
spirit of our new institutions, is the right of discus-
sion and examination in public instruction ? In
terms still more precise — is a man who teaches here
publicly in the name of the state, before men of dif-
erent creeds, obliged to adhere to the letter of a
particular communion, to carry into all his re-
searches this spirit of exclusion, to allow nothing
to appear which might cause a temporary separa-
tion ? If I am answered in the affirmative, I
should like you to tell me which is the communion
which ought to be sacrificed to the others; whether
i it ought to be that which excludes every other as
so many errors ; or that which receives them all as
so many promises ; for I do not imagine that any
one would desire, without a moment's deliberation,
to have the minority passed over as non-existent.
Am I here Catholic or Protestant ? To state the
question is to solve it.
Even under the Restoration, when there existed a
state religion, instruction derived a portion of its dis-
tinction from its very liberty ; on one hand, a Pro-
testantism learnedly impartial, on the other, a Catho-
licism boldly innovating, whicli approximated and
blended in a community of ideas and hopes. Now,
that which science, literature, philosophy, had set
forth with so much splendour in theory, was intro-
duced into the real world, into our institutions,
by the Revolution of July. And now that there is
no longer a state religion, how can you expect the
state publicly to set up intolerance here ? That
would be an evident contradiction of lier own prin-
ciple. 1 know but one means of introducing the
principle of exclusion into these chairs; it would be
to allow all our freshest recollections to fall into
oblivion, to shatter every thing that has been
done in the full light of day, and by a splendid
apostasy to step back over more than half a cen-
tury. Until that day comes, not only will it be
here permitted, but it will be one of the necessary
consequences of the social dogma, that we should
raise ourselves to a height at which the divided,
separated, and inimical churches may approximate
and become conciliated. This point of view, which
is that taken by Fi'ance in her institutions, is also
that of knowledge ; it cannot live in the tumult of
controversies, Ijut requires a serener re^^ion.
If the promised unity is one day to be realised,
if those many creids now o])posed and armed against
one another, are, as has always been predicted, tw
approach one another in the kingdom of the future,
if one church is destined to gather together the
tribes dispersed to the four winds of heaven, if the
members of the human family secretly desire to
blend themselves in one body, if the tunic of Christ,
for which lots were drawn upon Calvary, is ever to
re-appear in its integrity, I say that knowledge ac-
complished a good work, by entering first on the
way leading to this alliance. {Applause.) We shall
have for enemies those who love hatred and divi-
sion in holy things. Never mind, we must per-
severe ; man divides, God reunites. {Applause.)
Certainly the eyes of those must be shut who do
not see that a new religious dawn is breaking upon
the world ; I am so persuaded of this, that my
ideas always turn to that quarter, and I find it, so
to speak, impossible to sepai'ate any department of
Imman affairs from the influence of religion. Man
for some time has been so often deceived by man,
that we must not be surprised, if we find him
incapable of looking with enthusiasm towards any-
thing but God. But this admitted, who have been
the first missionaries of this new Gospel? I answer;
thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers. No one can
deny that these are the missionaries who every-
where in France and in Germany first began to
have recourse to that great groundwork of spiritu-
ality, which is the substance of all real faith.
Strange to say, scarcely have they completed this
precursory work, than they are anathematized !
It is thought that if the human mind has raised
itself towards heaven, it is for the purpose of deny-
ing and falsifying itself for ever ; that the time has
at length arrived to extinguish reason, and that it
should be buried as quickly as possible in the God
which it has at length regained. As usual, men
dispute for the exclusive property and the pri-
mitioe of this returning God. But this religious
movement is more deep, more universal than ap-
pears; every one would shut it up, circumscribe it,
wall it in, within a particular precinct : but this
aggrandised renewed Christ, escaped, as it were, a
second time from the sepulchre, will not be so
easily enslaved ; he divides himself, gives himself,
communicates himself to all. Religious life appears
not only in Catholicism, but in Protestantism ; not
only in positive faith, but also in philosophy. This
movement will not be stayed in the South of Europe,
I see it also fermenting in the Germanic and Slavonic
races, among those who are called heretics, as well
as among the orthodox. Whilst all the nations of
Europe feel themselves shaken to the very centre by
I know not what holy presentiments of the future,
there are men who think, that all this movement
is taking place, according to the designs of Provi-
dence, for the establishment of the Society of Jesus.
At least, if we for a moment make this strange con-
cession, they must allow that there is something
good in their adversaries, since the generation edu-
cated by the Jesuits was that which expelled them,
and the generation educated by philosophy is that
which brings them back. {Applause.)
The history of the religious oi'ders since the esta-
blishment of Christianity would be a singularly
philosophical work. As philosophy has from time to
time been reinvigorated by new schools, so religion
has been raised, exalted from age to age, by new
oi-ders, affecting to possess it, and, in fact, at a
given time possessing it pre-eminently. They have
LIBERTY OF DISCUSSION IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS.
29
each their peculiar lit'ii and virtue ; they push for-
ward during some time the chariot of faith, until,
corrupted by the worldly spirit which they oppose,
and mistaking themselves for a final cause, they
praise and deify themselves. Every one of these
orders has its written code of laws ; in these
charters of the desert appeai-s at every line the pro-
found instinct of the legislator : some are even as
remarkable for their foi'm as for their contents ;
some are brief, laconic, like the laws of Lycurgus ;
for example, those of the Anchorites : some re-
mind us, by their flowery language, of the style of
Plato ; such are those of St. Basil : some by their
extraordinary splendour might compare with the
most poetical flights of Dante; they are those of the
Master : some by the profound knowledge they
display of men and of affairs, appear conceived in
tlie true spirit of Machiavel — they ai'e those of
the Jesuits. The situation of the liuman mind at
each of these epochs is impressed upon these docu-
ments. At the beginning, in the institutions of the
Anchorites, in the rule of St. Anthony, the sou! ap-
pears concerned only with herself. Far from being
troubled with the desire of conversion, man, imbued
still with tlie spirit of Paganism, studiously avoids
man ; he desires no communion with liis fellow.
Armed against everything which suri'ounds him, for
the single combat of the desert *, his life, night
and day, consists only in contemplation and pi'ayer.
Pray and read all day f, says the rule. At a later
period, during the middle age, silent associations
succeeded tlie hermitage. Under the law of St.
Benedict, men lived united in the same monas-
teries ; but this little society made no pretensions as
yet to engage in contest with the great one. It
lived entrenched behind its lofty walls t; it opened
the door to the world if the world came to it ; but
it made no advances towards the world. The
power of speech was held in awe. An eternal
silence closed the lips of these brothers ; for if they
opened it was feared that Paganism might manifest
itself. Every night these associates of the tomb
slept in their cowl with their loins girded up, that
they might be ready at once to answer the call of
the archangel's trumpet. The spirit of the rule
ordained that each hour should be piously occupied
in the silent expectation of the last day. But when
this epoch had passed, there was a revolution in
the institutions of the orders. They desired to
communicate directly with the world, which hither-
to they had only perceived through the narrow
grating of their monastery. Tiie monk left the con-
vent to bear abroad the word, the flame which he
had preserved intact. Such is the spirit of the in-
stitutions of St. Francis, of St. Dominic, of the Tem-
plars, and of the orders which sprang up under
the inspiration of the Crusades. The struggle was
transferred from the desert to the city ; but there
still I'emained one step to take ; this was r(?served
for the order which pretends to embody all those that
preceded it, namely, the Society of Jesus. For all
the others had a particular temperament, object,
and habit ; they belonged more to one place tlian
to another ; they preserved the character of
their native country. Some indeed, by their very
statutes cannot be transplanted out of a particular
territory, to which tliey are attached like an indi-
genous plant.
• Singularem pugnam eremi. f Lege et ora toti die.
I Munimenta clauslrorum.
The character of Jesuitism, originated in Spain,
prepared in France, developed, fixed in Rome, was
to assimilate to itself the cosmopolitan spirit which
Italy then impressed on all its works. This is why
it harmonized with the spirit of the Revival in the
south of Europe. On the other hand, it separated
itself from the middle age by voluntarily rejecting
asceticism and maceration. In Spain it at first con-
templated only the possession of the Holy Sepul-
chre. In Italy it became more practical ; it was
not content with coveting a tomb, it coveted * also
the living to make it a corpse. But by mixing and
blending itself with temporal society it came to liave
all things in common with it, and to be incapable of
teaching it anything. The world has conquered it,
not it the world ; and the epitome of the whole
history of the religious orders is this, that, at the
beginning, in the institution of the Anchorites, man
was so exclusively occupied with God that worldly
things had no existence for him ; wliilst at last, on
the contrary, in the Society of Jesus man is so ab-
sorbed in things, that God disappears in the hubbub
of worldly affairs. {Applause.)
Is this history of the religious orders finished ?
Until the present day, the revolutions of science and
society have continually called into existence, as an-
tagonists and correctives, new orders; the successive
innovations in the spirit of these partial societies,
harmonized admirably with the immutability of the
Church. This is the most certain sign of vitality.
Now, during tlie last three centuries, since the esta-
blishment of the Society of Jesus, has nothing hap-
pened to render a new foundation necessary ? Has
there not been enough of change, of rashness in the
operations of the intellect ? Does not the French Re-
volution deserve a corrective, similar to those which
were applied in the middle age to every political
and social commotion ? Everything has changed,
every thing has been renewed in temporal society.
Philosophy, 1 confess it, under her modest appear-
ance, conceals too much boldness and too much
pride. She believes herself victorious ! and it is
against such an enemy that you oppose an effete
religious order ! For my own part, were I en-
trusted with the mission which others have under-
taken, instead of being content with restoring socie-
ties which have already committed themselves, and
roused a spirit of hostility — the Dominicans, the
Jesuits — I should believe that there are in the
world enough of new changes, tendencies, philoso-
phies, heresies if you will, to make it worth while to
oppose to them another nile, another form, at least
another name ; I should believe that this spirit of
creation is the necessary testimony to the vitality
of doctrine, and that a single word, pronounced by
a new order, would be a thousand times more effi-
cacious than all the eloquence in the world in the
mouth of an antiquated society.
However this may be, I have said enough to show
that preaching in a particular church and public in-
struction before men of different beliefs are not the
same thing ; that to expect one to do the work of
the other is to destroy both. Belief and knowledge,
those two phases of the human mind, which may
perhaps one day be united in one, have always been
regarded as distinct. At the epoch of which we are
treatuig they were specifically represented in his-
* There is a rule of Loyola expressed in these terms :
" If authority declares that white is black, affirm that i
is black." — Spiritual Exercises, p. 291.
30
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
tory by two men who appeared at no gi'eat distance
of time one from the other ; Ignatius Loyola and
Christopher Columbus. Loyola by an absolute ad-
herence to the letter of authority, in the midst of
the greatest commotions, preserves, maintains the
past, snatches it as it were from the tomb, to re-
instate it in the world. As to Christopher Colum-
bus, he exhibits how the future comes to pass by
the union of belief and liberty in the mind of man.
He possesses as well as any man the tradition of
Christianity ; but he interprets, he develops it ;
he listens to every voice, to all the religious pre-
sentiments of the rest of mankind ; he believes that
there may be something divine, even in the most
dissenting creeds. From this conception of religion,
of the truly universal church, he raises himself to a
clear view of the destinies of the globe; he gathers
together, he scrutinizes, the mysterious words of the
Old and the New Testament ; he ventures to give
them a meaning, which, for a while, scandalizes in-
fallibility ; one day he gives it the lie, the next he
compels it to submit ; he breathes the breath of
liberty into all tradition ; fi-om this liberty springs
the word by which another world is born; he
shatters the outward letter, he breaks the seal of tlie
prophets; of their visions, he makes reality. This
is a tendency different from the first. These two
ways will long remain open before they unite.
Every one is fi-ee to choose, to advance or to retreat.
For my part it is my duty to establish, to assert
the right, here, publicly, to prefer to the tendency
which concerns only the past, that which opens a
vista into futurity, and by augmenting the bounds of
creation, augments the idea of the power of God.
This I hope I have done without hatred and with-
out tergiversation ; and whatever may happen, of
this one thing 1 am certain, that I never shall re-
pent of having done so. {Cviitinued applause.)
[The question was decided this very day. Warned
by the press, both the friends and the enemies of
liberty of discussion gathered together, and filled
two amphitheatres. During three quarters of an
hour, it was impossible to speak. Many persons,
even among our friends, thought it would be neces-
sary to adjourn to another day. This I knew
would be a confession of defeat, and I resolved to
remain, if necessary, until night. Such also was
the feeling of the greater part of the assembly. 1
thank the crowd of unknown friends, who, within
and without, by their firmness and moderation,
put an end from this day forth to all hope of dis-
turbances.]
LECTURE THE SECOND.
ORIGIN OF JESUITISM : IGNATIUS LOYOLA : THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES*.
I KNOW the spirit with which this audience is ani-
mated, and I trust 1 have said enough for it to
know me too. You know that I speak without
hatred, but with a quiet determination to speak
my whole mind. {Interruption,') An impartial
observer, beholding what has lately taken place
within these precincts, will willingly allow that
a new fact is manifesting itself — the importance
conceded by all to religious questions. It is
a thing of no mean significance, to behold men
pursuing such subjects with the interest (I will not
say the passion) with which they formerly engaged
in politics alone. It was felt that the interest of
all was concerned ; and one word only was required
to strike out the spark which was hidden at the
bottom of every heart. The questions with which
we meet in our subject, are the most important
that can possibly occupy us ; they come in contact
with the actual world only at one point, on account
of their very magnitude. Let us learn, I pray you,
to raise ourselves with them, and to pi-eserve that
calmness wliich befits the search after truth. That
which is here done remains not hidden within
these precincts. Far off, even beyond the limits
of France, there are contemplative minds observing
our doings.
There are times when men are brought up from
the very cradle in a habit of silence, because they
have never to expect a serious contradiction ; but
there are times when they are trained to the dis-
cipline of free discussion, in open day, and those
times are the present. The worst service tliat
• Delivered May 17th, 1843.
could be rendered to any cause, is to endeavour to
stifle the examination of it by force. Success is im-
possible; the attempt never succeeds except in per-
suading even the most conciliatory minds that the
cause defended is incompatible with the new order of
things. Of what use are all these puerile menaces \
France is not to be hissed off the stage. No man in
this country can circulate his ideas without meet-
ing somewhere with public control. The times are
past when an idea, a society, an order, could insi-
nuate, form, establish itself in secret, and then
suddenly burst forth, when its roots were so deeply
buried that they could no longer be extirpated. In
whatever path men enter, they always find some
watchful sentinel ready to give the alarm. No traps
are now set; there are no ambuscades. That freedom
of speecli whieli I now employ to-day, you may em-
ploy to-morrow ; it is my safeguard, but it is yours
also. What would become of my adversaries if they
were deprived of it ? I can easily imagine a philo-
sopher reduced to his books; but the Church with-
out speech, who can imagine it for a moment ? And
yet you pretend to stifle speech in the name of the
Church. Go; all I can say to you is this, that its
greatest enemies could not do otherwise.
I have shown that the establishment of the
Society of Jesus is the very groundwork of ray
subject. Let us consider this question in the most
impartial manner. Do not think that I condemn
entirely the sympathy which it inspires in some
persons of these times. I begin by saying, that I
believe firmly in their sincerity. In the midst
of modern society, often uncertain and without
ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.
31
an aim, they meet with the remains of an extra-
ordinary estabHshment wiiich, while all else has
changed, has immutably preserved its unity. This
spectacle astonishes them. At the sight of these
still majestic ruins, they feel themselves attracted
by a power which they do not estimate. I would
not take my oath that this state of dilapidation does
not influence them more powerfully than prosperity
itself would. Perceiving all the outward forms
preserved, rules, written constitutions, customs
subsisting, they imagine that the Cliristian spirit
still inhabits these images ; the more so, that a
single step taken in this direction leads to many
others, and that the principles of the body are
connected together with infinite art. Having once
entered this road, they advance further and further
still, seeking beneath the forms of the doctrine of
Loyola, for the genius and spirit of Christianity.
Now it is my duty to tell these persons, and all
those who hear me, that, life is to be found else-
where, that it exists no longer in this constitution,
this image void of the Spirit of God; that what has
been, has been ; that the perfume has escaped from
the vase ; that the soul of Christ is no longer in
this whited sepulchre. Even should they visit me
with a hatred which they believe eternal, and which
it is impossible for me to share ; yet, if they come
here violent, menacing, I forewarn them, I tell
them to their face, I will do every thing in my
power to lead them out of a road where, in my
opinion, they will find nothing but hollowness and
deception ; and it shall not be my fault, if, having
delivered them from the embraces of an egotistical
rule and of a dead system, I do not lead them into
an entirely contrary system, which I believe to be
the living road of truth and of humanity.
In the most ordinary aff'airs of life people take
advice ; they hear both sides of the question ; and
yet when men are asked to submit the guidance of
their thoughts, their hopes of futui-ity, to an order
of which the primary maxim, in conformity with
the genius of secret societies, is to bind you at
every step, concealing that which is to follow,
there are those who desire that no one shall show
them the end ! They are full of hatred against
those who desire to point out whither this darksome
road leads. Many other more persuasive voices
than mine impel men towards the past. Suffer
then what it would be madness to oppose ; suffer
in another place, another voice to point out an-
other road, basing its conclusions, without anger,
upon history and ancient documents ; after which
the simplicity of no one will have been taken ad-
vantage of. If you persevere, your convictions,
at least, will have been submitted to the test of
public contradiction; you will have acted as sincere
men should act in serious matters. I oppose you
openly, in good faith. I expect that you will
employ similar weapons against me.
Who knows, if among those who believe them-
selves animated with the greatest aversion, there
are not present some, even now, who in future will
be grateful to him who has checked them this day
from taking a step which would have committed
them for ever ? Men ought to know whither their
steps are tending ; and my first business must be
to explain the mission of the order of Jesus in
the contemporary world. Jesuitism is a warlike
machine ; it must always have an enemy to combat,
otherwise its prodigious combinations would be use-
less. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
it had Protestantism for an antagonist. Not con-
tent with this adversary, the idolatrous nations of
Asia and America furnished it with a splendid occu-
pation. It glories in struggling with the powerful.
In our time, what enemy has brought it to life
again ? Not surely the schismatic church, because,
on the contrary, she recalled and saved it in Russia.
Not idolatry. What then is the adversary powerful
enough to awaken the dead ? To exhibit this with
gi-eater clearness, I will insist only on the testimony
of the Papacy itself, on the bulls condemning and
I'estoring the order. From these documents and
these dates, you youi'selves shall draw the inference.
The bull suppressing the institution is of the 21st
July, 1773. I must quote several passages, pre-
mising beforehand that I do not intend using terms
more expUcit or more violent than those which
the Papacy has given utterance to by the mouth
of Clement XIV.
" Scarcely had the society been formed, (suo fere
ab initio,) than various germs of division and jealousy
manifested themselves not only among its own
members, but also between it and the other regular
bodies and orders, as well as the secular clergy,
the academies, the universities, the public colleges
of belles lettres ; and even the princes who had
received it within their dominions.
" The precautions taken were far from appeasing
the cries and complaints that were raised against
the society. On the contrary, in nearly every
quarter of the globe afflicting disputes were raised
against its doctrines, {universum pene orbem pervase-
runt molestissimw contentiones de societatis doctrina,)
which many persons denounced as opposed to the
orthodox faith and public morals. Dissension in-
creased within the bosom of the society, and without, i
charges against it became more frequent, parti- |
cularly with reference to its too great avidity for
worldly goods.
" We have remarked, with the greatest sorrow,
that all the remedial measures which have been
resorted to have had scarcely any effect in de-
stroying and dissipating these serious troubles,
accusations, and complaints; and that many of our
predecessoi-s, as Urban VIII., Clement IX., X.,
XL, XII., Alexander VII. and VIIL, Innocent X.,
XL, XII., XIIL, and Benedict XIV., have la-
boured to bring about so desirable a result, but
ineffectually. They endeavoured, nevertheless, to
restore peace to tlie Church by publishing very
salutary constitutions, by forbidding all traffic, and
absolutely interdicting the use and application of
maxims which the holy see had justly condemned
as scandalous and manifestly hai'niful to morals, &c.
" In order to take the safest course in a matter of
so great importance, we thought it required a long
space of time, not only to enable us to make exact
researches, to weigh every thing maturely, and to
deliberate wisely, but also to implore, with many
sighs and continual prayers, the help and support
of the Father of Light.
" After having taken so many necessary measures,
in the assurance that we are aided by the Holy Spirit,
being besides impelled by the necessity of fulfil-
ling our ministry, and considering that the Society
of Jesus holds out no further hope of those abun-
dant fruits and those great advantages, on account
of which it was instituted, approved of, and en-
riched with so many privileges by our predecessors.
32
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
that it is, perhaps, impossible, whilst it exists, that
the Church should be restored to true and lasting
peace; persuaded, impelled by so many powerful
motives, and by others, with which the laws of
prudence and the good government of the uni-
versal Church supply us, but which we keep in the
profound secrecy of our heart; after mature de-
liberation, of our certain knowledge, and in the
plenitude of our apostolical power, we extinguish
and suppress the said society, abolish its statutes
and constitutions, even tiiose which have been
ratified with oath, by apostolical confirmation, or
in any other manner."
On the 16th of May, 1774, the cardinal-ambas-
sador in France transmitted a confirmation of the
bull to the minister of foreign aff'airs, accompanied
with a commentary which was at the saaie time
a warning to the king and to the clergy.
" The pope has decided upon the suppression, at
the foot of the altar, and in the presence of God.
He believes that monks, proscribed by the most
Catholic states, and strongly suspected of having
entered, both of old and recently, into criminal
conspiracies, having in their favour only the ex-
terior of regularity, decried in their maxims, given
up, in order to render themselves powerful and
excite awe, to commerce, stock-jobbing, and politics,
could only pi-oduce fruits of dissension and discoi'd,
that a reform would only palliate the evil, and
that it was better to prefer before all things the
peace of the universal Church and of the holy see. .
" In a word, Clement XIV. believes the Society
of Jesuits incompatible with the tranquillity of the
Church and the Catholic states. It was the spirit
of the government of this company which was
dangerous ; it is this spirit, then, which it is im-
portant should not be revived ; and it is to this
that the pope directs the serious attention of the
king and the clergy of France."
My conclusion now begins to appear. Do not
forget that the bull of interdiction scarcely pi-e-
ceded by fifteen years the Vjreaking out of the
French revolution of 1783. The precursory genius
which gave to France the royalty of intelligence,
governed the world even before it developed
itself openly. It had passed from writers to
princes, from princes to popes. Behold the con-
catenation of events ! France is about to throw
herself into the path of innovation ; and the pa-
pacy, inspii'ed by the pervading genius of the
time, shatters the machine created to nip in
the bud the principle of innovation. The spirit
iif 1789, and of the Constituent Assembly, is no
other than that of the pontifical bull of 1773.
What has happened since then 1 As long as new
France remains victorious in the world, the Com-
))any of Jesus is no longer heard of. Before the
freely or gloriously displayed banner of the French
Revolution, this company disappears, as though it
had never existed. Its fragments are hidden
under other names. The Empire which, neverthe-
less, loved the strong, left its remains in the dust,
well knowing that he who could accomplish every
thing, could not raise even one stone of it without
being unfaithful to his origin ; and that among the
decisions come to by nations, there exist some which
must not be trifled with. Nevertheless, the mo-
ment has come when the Society of Jesus, crushed
by the papacy, is triumphantly re-established by
the papacy. What has come to pass ? The bull
restoring the order is dated August 16th, 1814 ;
does this date tell you nothing ? That was the
time when France besieged, trampled on, was com-
pelled to hide her flag, to contradict in her law
the principle of the Revolution, to accept just as
much air, light, and life, as was vouchsafed to her.
In the midst of the crusade of ancient Europe,
each employed its customary arms in this incursion
of the armies of every region ; the papacy let loose
also the resuscitated army of Loyola, in order that
the mind being circumscribed in its operation as
well as the body, the defeat should be complete,
and that France, forced to bend the knee, should
not entertain, even in the inmost recesses of her
being, the thought of recovering her feet.
Such are the facts, the history, the reality, con-
cerning which it will be found impossible to deceive
the rising generation. This must be made quite
clear ; this is the issue to which we must come, if
we once enter on this path. It does not appear,
it is not pointed out at the outset, but it is the
necessary goal. On the one hand the French Re-
volution, with the development of religious and
social life ; on the other hand, concealed no one
knows where, its natural antagonist, the Order of
Jesus, with its unshaken connexion with the past.
It is between these things we have to choose.
Let no one think that they can be conciliated.
It is impossible. The mission of Jesuitism in the
sixteenth century was to destroy the Reformation ;
the mission of Jesuitism in the nineteenth century
is to desti'oy the Revolution, which supports, in-
cludes, envelopes, and goes beyond the Reforma-
tion. (Applause.) This, it must be confessed, is
an important mission. The matter in question is
not the University; it is not a mere college dispute.
Something higher is aimed at. The object now,
as formerly, is to enervate the princij)le of life,
noiselessly to dry up the future in its source. Tliat
is the whole question. It is now stated for our
solution. But it is destined to develop itself
elsewhere, to awaken those who are wrapped in
the profoundest slumber, feigned or real ; for it is
probably not without reason that we have been so
irresistibly compelled to unmask it here.
I now, without any circumlocution, cari'y my
examination into the heart of the doctrine, which
I shall first study historically, impartially, in its
author, Ignatius Loyola. You are well acquainted
with that life, over which chivalry, enthusiasm,
and cool calculation, by turns held sway. Never-
theless, we must examine the first beginnings, and
see how so much asceticism was able to agree with
so much policy, the indulgence in visions with the
aptitude for business. Placed at the confines of
two epochs, do not be astonished that this man
was so powerful, that he is so still, that he stamps
his conquest with an indestructible seal. He
exercised, at the same time, the power which
sprang from the ecstasy of the twelfth century,
and the authority based on the consummate ex-
perience of the modern world : he shared in the
spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, and of Machiavel.
In whatever way we regard him, he is one of
those who lay siege to the human mind from the
most opposite extremities.
In a castle in Biscay, a young man, of an ancient
family, receives, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the military education of a Spanish noble.
Whilst learning the sword exercise, he reads,
IGNATIUS LOYOLA.
33
by way of recreiitioii, the exploits of Amadis ; this
is the whole of his acquirements. He becomes page
to Ferdinand, then captain of a company ; hand-
some, brave, worldly, greedy after excitement and
battles. At the siege of Pampelima by the French
he retires into the citadel ; he defends it with
desperate courage. In the breach his right leg is
broken by a Biscayan. He is cari-ied on a litter
to a neighbouring castle, that of his father. After
a painful operation, submitted to with heroic
fortitude, he asks, to distract his thoughts, for his
books of chivalry. In that old plundered castle
were found only the lives of Jesus Christ and the
saints. He reads them ; his heart, his thoughts,
his whole mind become lighted up with a sudden
revelation. In a short time this young man, so
engrossed by worldly passions, becomes animated
by a sort of divine madness ; the page is soon
transformed into an ascetic, a hermit, a flagellant.
Such were the beginnings of Ignatius Loyola.
What was the first thought which fired the mind
of this man of action ? The project of a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land. While reading the lives of the
holy Fathers, he draws, paints roughly, the scenes
and figures to which they refer. Soon the idea of
treading that sacred groimd engi'osses him. He be-
lieves he sees, nay he sees the Virgin beckoning to
him ; he sets out. As his wound is not quite
cured, he mounts on horseback, carrying at the
pommel of his saddle his girdle, his gourd, his
coi'd sandals, his staff — all the insignia of the
pilgrim. On his road he meets a Moor, with whom
he discusses the mystery of the Virgin. A violent
temptation seizes him to put the unbeliever to
death ; he abandons the reins to the instinct of
his horse. If he is brought back into the com-
pany of the man, he will kill him ; if not, ho will
forget him. Thus he begins at once to place his
conscience at the mercy of chance. At some
distance he dismisses his servants, puts on the
haircloth shirt, and continues his journey with
bare feet. At Manreza he enters the hospital ;
he performs the vigil of arms before the altar of
the Virgin, and suspends his sword on the pillar
of the chapel. He redoubles his macerations ; he
girds his loins with a chain of iron, his bread
is mixed with ashes, and the Spanish noble begs
his bread from door to door in the streets of
Manreza. But even this does not satisfy this
heart devoured with asceticism. Loyola retires
into a cavern, whither the light of day never
reaches, except through a fissure in the walls ;
there he passes whole days, even whole weeks,
without tasting food ; he is found stretched in
a swoon on the brink of a torrent. In spite of all
these penances, his mind is still troubled, he is
assailed, not by doubt but I»y scruple; he subtilizes
with himself: the same internal combat which
Luther braved when about to change every thing,
Loyola sustained in the attempt to preserve every
thing. Even the idea of suicide pursues him ;
in this internal warfare he groans, he cries, he
rolls himself upon the earth. But his was a soul
not to be overcome by the first assault ; Ignatius
raises his head ; the vision of the Trinity, of the
Virgin calling him towards her Son, saves him
from despair. In the cavern of Manreza he be-
comes conscious of the power which is in him :
he knows not yet what he is to do ; but this he
knows, that he is to do something.
' A little merchaiiL-vessel gives Inui, through
charity, a passage to Gaeta ; he is now on the
! road to the Holy Land. In Italy, breathless and
' a beggar, he glances over Rome, and then drags
himself towards Venice. « 'Tis too late," cries a
voice ; " the vessel of the pilgrims has departed."
j " Never mind," replies Loyola ; " if vessels are
wanting, I will cross the sea on a jijank." With
such a determined will, it was not difficult to reach
Jerusalem ; he arrives there, still with bare feet,
: on the 4th of September, 1523. Stripped of every
[ thing, he strips himself further to purchase of the
Saracens the right to behold and re-behold the
holy sepulchre. But just as he attains the goal of
his desires, he perceives another and more distant
good. Hitherto he had desired only to touch
these stones ; now that he has touched them, he
looks beyond. Above the holy sepulchre Christ
appears to him in the heavens, and beckons him
to approach nearer. To call, to convert the na-
tions of the East is the fixed idea which pos-
sesses him. Henceforth he has a positive mis-
sion ; and from the moment when his imagination
attained the desired end, another man is created
within Loyola. His imagination calms ; a vast
sphere of reflection opens ; the zeal for souls be-
comes more intense than the love of the Cross *.
The ascetic, the hermit is transformed, the poli-
tician commences.
At the sight of this deserted sepulchre, he
undei'stands that the calculations of i-eason only
can bring back the world to it. In this new
crusade it is not the sword, but the mind that
must work the miracle. It is a fine sight to be-
hold this last of the crusaders proclaiming, in view
of Calvary, that arms alone can work nothing
in bringing back men to belief; from that day
forth his plan is made, his system prepared, his
determination fixed. He is ignorant of all things,
scarcely knowing how to read or write. In a few
years he determines to know all that the learned
can teach. And, behold, in truth, the soldier, the
amputated invalid, abandoning his imaginary pro-
jects and the delights of asceticism, to take his
pla«e in the midst of children in the elementary
schools of Barcelona and of Salamanca. The
knight of the court of Ferdinand, the anchorite of
the rocks of Manreza, the free pilgrim of Mount
Tabor, abases his apocalyptic spirit to grammar !
What does he, this man to whom the heavens are
open ? He learns conjugations, he spells Latin.
This prodigious self-government, in the midst of
divine illuminations, already marks a new epoch.
Nevertheless, the man of the desert re-appears
in the pupil. He raises, they say, the dead ; he
exorcises spirits. He has not become so much
of a child but that the saint appears at intervals.
Besides, he professes a strange kind of theology,
which nobody until then had taught, and which
begins to scandalize the Inquisition. He is cast
into prison, and is liberated only on condition that
he does not open his mouth again until he has
studied four years in a regular school of theology.
This sentence determines him to go whither know-
ledge called him — to the University of Paris. Is
it not time that the idea which has been so long
ripening, should manifest itself ? Loyola is nearly
thirty-five years old ; why does he yet wait ? This
strange scholar has for chamber companions, in
* Pere Bouhour's Life of St. Ignatius, p. 122.
34
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
the college of St. Barbe, two young men, Pierre Le
Fevre, and rran9ois Xavier. The one is a
shepherd of the Alps, ready to receive the im-
pression of any powerful word ; Loyola, in his case,
is reserved ; he does not reveal his project until
after three years of caution and calculati(jn. The
other is a gentleman, overweening alike from youth
and from birth. Loyola praises, flatters him ; he
becomes again, for his sake, the noble of Biscay.
Moreover, in order to subjugate minds, he pos-
sesses a more certain means — the book of Spiritual
Exercises, a work which contains his whole secret,
and which he had sketched in the hermitages of
Spain. Prepared by his conversation, none of his
friends escaped the influence of this strange produc-
tion, which they called the Mysterious Book. Al-
ready two disciples had taken this bait ; they
belonged to him for ever. Others of the same age
join the first; in their turn they felt the fascina-
tion. These were Jago Laynez, who afterwards was
general of the order ; Alphonso Salmeron ; Rodri-
guez D'Azevedo, — all Spaniards or Portuguese.
One day these young men assemble together
on the heights of Montmartre, under the eye of
the master. In sight of the vast city, they make a
vow to go together to the Holy Land, or to place
themselves at the disposal of the pope. Two years
afterwards, these same men arrive at Venice by
diff"erent roads, each with a stick in their hands, a
sack on their back, the Mysterious Book in their
wallet. Whither are they going 1 They do not
know. They have entered into alliance with a
spirit which has subjugated them by its logical
power. Loyola reaches the rendezvous by a diff"erent
road. They believed they were about to be era-
barked for the solitudes of Judaia. Loyola points
mrt to them, instead of those solitudes, the field of
combat — Luther, Calvin, the Anglican Church,
Henry VIII., attacking the Papacy. With one
word he sends Franfois Xavier to the uttermost
ends of the eastern world. He keeps his other
eight disciples with him to oppose to Germany, to
England, to the half of France and of Europe,
which had all been shaken. At the bidding of the
master, these eight men advance with eyes shut,
without counting or estimating the power of their
adversaries. The Company of Jesus is formed ;
the captain of the citadel of Pampeluna leads it to
the combat. Amidst the struggles of the sixteenth
century, a legion emerges from the dust of the
roads. This beginning is grand, powerful, im-
pressive ; the seal of genius is there. I should be
the last person to deny it.
If such was the origin of the Society of Jesus,
let us have recourse to the works which be-
came its soul, and contain what Tacitus calls the
secrets of empire — arcana imperii. Jesuitism has
been studied in its developments ; but no one, that
I know of, has exhibited it in its primitive ideal.
The book of Spiritual Exercises cast, one after the
other, all the first foundei's of the order in the same
mould. Whence did it derive this extraoi'dmary
character ? That is what we must examme. We
here appx'oach the soui'ce of the spirit of the Com-
pany.
After having passed through all the conditions of
ecstasy, enthusiasm, and sanctity, Loyola, with a
spirit of order, of which I cannot describe the
immensity, undertook to reduce into a system, all
the experiments which he had made upon himself,
even in the fervour of his visions. He applied the
method of the modern mind, of physical philoso-
phers, to that which is beyond all human method
— to the enthusiasm of things divine. In one word
he composed a physiology, a manual, or rather the
formula * of ecstasy and sanctity.
Do you know what it is that distinguishes him
from all the ascetics of the past ? It is that he
was able, coldly, logically, to observe himself, to
analyze himself in that state of rapture, which in
the case of others excludes the vei'y idea of reflec-
tion. Imposing on his disciples as operations, acts
which with him were spontaneous, he was enabled
in thirty days to bow down, by this means, both
will and reason, pretty nearly as a horseman breaks
his courser. He only wanted thirty days — triginta
dies — to subdue a soul. Observe, in fact, that Jesu-
itism developed itself at the same time with the
modern Inquisition. Whilst this dislocated the
body, the Spiritual Exercises dislocated the mind
under the machinery of Loyola.
To arrive at the state of sanctity, we find in this
book rules such as the following : Firstly, trace
on a piece of paper Hues of diff'ereut lengths,
answering to the greatness of the various sins. Se-
condly, shut yourself up in a room, of which the
windows are half-closed {januis ac feiiestris clausis
tantisper) ; now prostrate -f yourself with your
face upon the ground ; now lay yourself on your
back, raise yourself, sit down, &c. Fifthly, give
vent to exclamations (quintum, in exclamationem
pi-orumpere). Sixthly, in the contemplation of
hell, which contains two preludes, five points, and
one colloquy, behold in spii'it vast conflagrations ;
monsters and souls plunged in flaming crucibles ;
imagine you hear complaints, vociferations ; ima-
gine also a putrid odour of smoke, of sulphur, and
cadaverous cloacte ; taste of the bitterest things, such
as tears, gall, and the worm of the conscience J.
But it is not visions only that are thus imposed.
You would scarcely suppose it, but even the sighs
are set down ; the aspirations and the respirations
are marked ; the pauses, the intervals of silence,
are written down beforehand, as in a music- book.
You will not believe me; I must quote : " The third
manner of praying, is by measuring, after a certain
fashion, the words and the times of silence §."
This means consists in omitting some word between
each breath, each respu-ation. And a little fur-
ther on, — " Take care that there be equal intervals
between the respirations, the sobs, and the words."
{Et paria anhelituum ac vocum iutcrstitla obser-
vet.) All this means that the man, whether
inspired or not, is to become a machine for sighing
and sobbing, which is bound to sigh, weep, exclaim,
sob, at a particular moment, and exactly in the
order whicli experience teaches to be most useful.
Education liaving been thus begun, how is the
* Servatis ubique iisdem formuHs. — Exercil. Spirit.
p. 180.
+ Nunc prostintus hurai, et prouus aut supinus, nunc
sedens, aut stans, &c. p. 86.
X Punctum primum est, spectare per imaginationem
vasta iiit'ernorum incendia. . . . Tertium imaginari^ etiam
olfactu fumum, sulphur, et sentinae cujusdam seu faecis
atque putredlnis graveolentiam persentire. Quartum,
gustare similiter re.s aniarissimas, ut lacrymas, rancorem,
conscientiffique verraem, &c. — Exercil. Spirit, p. 80, 82, 83.
§ Tertius orandi modus per quamdam vocum et tem-
porum commensurationem.— iSj;ecci/. Spirit, p. 200.
THE BOOK OF SPIRITUAL EXERCISES.
35
Christian automaton completed ? By wliat steps
does lie raise himself to the dogmas, the mysteries
of the Gospel ? You shall see If a mystery is
in question, the prelude (pneludium) to every
other operation is to represent a certain material
place, with all its dependencies. For instance, is
the Virgin in question ? Figure to yourself a little
house (domuncula). Is the Nativity ? A grotto, a
cavern, arranged in a comfortable or uncomfortable
manner. Is the preaching of the Gospel ? A road
with its windings more or less steep. Is it the
bloody sweat ? You must imagine, in the first
place, a garden of a certain length {certa magnitu-
dine, fijura, et habitudine), measure the length,
width, and contents. Is it the kingdom of Christ ?
Represent certain villas and fortresses {villas et
opplda). After which, to begin with, imagine a
human king* among liis people; address that king,
converse with him, gradually substitute the figure
of Christ, put yourself in the place of the people,
and enter thus into the true kingdom.
Such is the way to raise yourself to the myste-
ries. Behold the consequence ! Does it not show
a want of confidence in the human mind which
overthrows the very nature of Christianity, always
to set out from the material impression ? Is it not
to enter by stealth into the spiritual kingdom ? And
so many minute precautions, put in the place of the
sudden rapture of the mind, will they not neces-
sarily degenerate with the disciples into deceptions
to disconcert the prince of deception ? What ! God
is there kneeling, weeping in the bloody sweat, and
instead of being immediately carried beyond your-
self at the very thought, you waste your time in
showing me an inclosure, in pitifully measuring its
surface, in methodically tracing the plan of the
T^aXhs, {TiamjJilanam aid ardaam)\ You are at the
foot of Tabor, at the inexpressible moment of trans-
figuration, and you study the form of the mountain,
its height, its breadth, its vegetation ? Great God !
is this the Christianity of the Apostles ! Is this
the Christianity of the Fathers of the Church ? No!
for it is not that of Jesus Christ himself.
We see nothing in the Gospel of this premedi-
tation, and these theatrical effects. There the
doctrine alone speaks, not things. The Gospel re-
peats the word, and surrounding objects are illu-
minated. Loyola does j nst the contrary. As he
himself well expresses itf, it is by the help of the
* Punctum primum esto proponere mihi ob oculos huma-
num regem.— £xerc;7. Spirit, p. 97.
+ Admotis sensuum officiis, Exercit. Spirit. — Deinde
repetitiones et usus sensuum velut prius, p. 167.
senses, and of material objects, that he wishes to
reach the spirit. He employs the sensations as a
trap to catch souls, scattering thus the seed of those
ambiguous doctrines, which grew afterwards so
abundantly. Instead of at once exhibiting God,
he conducts man to God by a roundabout path.
Is that, I again ask, the straight road of the
Gospel ?
All this is connected with a still more radical
difference between the Christianity of Jesus Christ
and the Christianity of Loyola. This difference I
perceive and will explain.
In the spirit of the Gospel, the Master gives
himself to all, fully, without reserve, without draw-
back. Each disciple becomes, in his turn, a focus
which scatters life, develops it around him, and
the movement never halts in tradition. Loyola, on
the contrary, with a feeling which will never be
fully fathomed, communicates to his disciples the
least part of himself, the exterior or bark of his
thoughts. He had understood and felt what en-
thusiasm was in his youth. But as soon as he
aimed at organizing a power, he no longer grants
to any one this principle of liberty and life ; he
keeps the flame and lends the ashes. He had
raised himself on the wings of ecstasy to divine
raptures, he submits all others to the yoke of me-
thod. To be more certain of reigning alone without
successors, he begins by depriving them of whatever
constituted his greatness ; and as he demanded
for his God not merely a filial awe, but a servile
terror, tiinor sercilis, he leaves no issue open by
which man could raise his head. Christianity
made apostles ; Jesuitism makes instruments, not
disciples.
Let us turn our eyes in another direction; and
if, as I have always thought, the mind left too
much to itself is in want of nourishment, if the
religious sentiment is being breathed again into
the world, if the new star is rising, let us not re-
main behind, but let us advance first to meet the
God who is re-awakened in every heart. Let others,
if they will, bind themselves to the letter, we
must hasten towards the Spirit ; the enthusiasm
which alone creates, renews societies, is not dead
in France, though it may have cooled. Let not
the new generation, which contains the promise of
the future, dissipate its strength in too great
attention to minute points, but aspire to continue
the tradition of life ; and let us all unite to show
that religion is not exclusively confined to the
priest, or the truth to the pulpit.
LECTURE THE THIRD*.
THE RULES OF THE SOCIETY.— CHRISTIAN PHARISAISM.
Thanks to you, freedom of discussion will not be
stifled ; here, as every where else, right will over-
come might. At the first tidings of the fact that
the right of examination was openly menaced,
doubts existed upon so strange a matter ; when the
fact was established, conflicting opinions instantly
* Delivered May 2uh.
came to a truce ; you pressed around us ; and by
that irresistible power which springs from general
conviction, you have given to our woi'ds the only
support that we can desire. Whatever may be
the difference of our opinions upon other subjects,
we are now bound up in the same cause. We
could not retreat ; you could not forsake us : that
D 2
3G
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
is wliiit jvu all felt. 1 thank you in the name of
the right and of the fi-eedoiu of all ; we have, one
and all, I think, done what we ought to have done.
Do not, howevei", imagine that I have in future
nothing of more consequence to do than to em-
bitter my subject. My design is wholly diffei'ent.
I desire to-day exactly what I desired a month
ago : to examine philosophically and impartially
the Society of Jesus — a subject with which I fall
in without being able to avoid it. I add, that I
consider it a duty to study it ; not in the works
of its adversaries, not even in the writings of indi-
vidual members, but only in the documents which
are acknowledged to have given life to it.
You cannot fail of being struck with the rapidity
with which this society has fallen to decay. Where
shall we find any thing similar in any other order ?
The public voice was raised against it from its
cradle. The bull constituting it is dated 1540 :
and, by 1555, the society was expelled from a
great jiart of Spain, from the Netherlands and
Portugal in 1578, from all France in 1594, from
Venice in 1606, from the kingdom of Naples in
1622 ; I am speaking only of the Catholic states.
This reprobation shows, at least, how precocious
the evil was. Pascal, whilst attacking the casuists
contemporary with his age, was silent upon the
origin of the society ; the great name of Loyola
turned aside his weapon. In the impeachment
of the eighteenth century, the Jesuitism of the
eighteenth century was, above all, brought for-
ward. What remains to be done is, by examining
the very roots of the matter, to establish the fact
that this sudden decay was inevitable, since the
germ of it was contained in its first principle, and
that, in one word, it was impossible that Jesuitism
should not degenerate, since by its very nature
it is nothing but a corruption of Clu-istianity.
I have, I trust, impartially exhibited the ascetic
in Ignatius Loyola. Let us now examine him
as a politician. His greatest art consists in vanish-
ing just at the very moment when he is about to
attain his object. When his little society was
assembled at Venice, and it was necessary to take
the last step, — the journey to Rome, to ask the
sanction of the pope — he took good care not to
appear in person. He sent instead his disciples,
simple men, obedient to any yoke. For his own
part, he concealed himself, lest when he appeared,
the stamp of authority should appear too visibly
on his bi'ow. The pope, in accepting the disciples,
imagined that he had acquired fresh instruments ;
he knew not that he had given himself a master.
In this feature, Loyola's character resembles
that of Octavius. The object of his whole life
being almost attained, in order to be more secure
of it, he began by repelling it further from him.
Just as the society, called into existence by him,
is about to name its leader, Loyola draws back ;
he feels himself to be too insignificant, too un-
worthy of the burden ; he cannot accept the post.
He will willingly be numbered among the last,
unless his friends compel him to be the fii-st.
After several ye.ars, when he imagined that the
absolute authority which he had procured to be
forced upon him, required to be modified, he made
as if ho would abdicate ; he, the master of popes,
the sovereign of that company, which he could
put in motion from one end of the earth to the
other, by a single look, he threatened that he
would leave his villa at Tivoli, and become once
again the anchorite of Manreza. His hands were
too feeble, his mmd too timid, to suffice for the task ;
it was necessary that from all parts of the world
the members of the society should beseech him to
remain at their head. And yet his was no gentle
or easy yoke. His disciples, even the gi-eat Fran-
fois Xavier, wrote to him upon their knees : for
having dared to suggest a mere formal objection,
Laynez, the soul of the council of Trent, destined
to be his successor, trembled at a word from the
master ; he asked as a punishment to be dismissed
from the spiritual direction of the council, and to
spend the remainder of his life in teaching little
children to read. Such was the power exerted by
Loyola. He was, besides, careful to deny their
orthodoxy as soon as it displeased the powerful,
as in the affair of the Interim.
More and more attached to trifling rules, he
condemned in Bobadilla, in Rodriguez, that reve-
rence for those greater'ones which, at one time,
constituted his life. He wlio, in his youth, had been
imprisoned as an innovator, constantly exclaimed,
that were he to live a thousand years, he would
never cease to protest against" the innovations that
were being inti'oduced into theology, philosophy,
and grammar. He excelled iu diplomacy to such
a degree, as to leave nothing for his successors
to invent. His master-stroke in this respect was
the conciliating of his absolute power with that of
the papac}'. The pope wished, in spite of him, to
make Borgia, one of his disciples, a cardinal.
Loyola determined that the pope should offer, and
Borgia should refuse, indulging thus in the pride
of a refusal, and in the ostentation of humility. At
length, after having witnessed the accomplishment
of all his projects, the society recognized, the
Spiritual Exercises acknowledged, the Constitution
promulgated, he drew near the last hour and
dictated his last thought. What was it ? " Write;
I desire that the company should know my last
thoughts on the rirtue of obedience." And these
last revelations were those fearful words already
quoted, and which contain his whole theory, — that
man should become as a corpse, itt cadaver, with-
out motion, without will; that he should belike
the staff of an old man, sch is haculus, which is taken
up and thrown aside at will.
These were not then figures of speech, acci-
dentally lighted upon in the Constitution ; it was
by these words, well-weighed and reiterated, that
he closed his career — the most cherished secret
of his soul which he recurred to in his last moments.
We wish we could deceive ourselves on this point ;
but we cannot. This it must be acknowledged is a
wholly new system of Christianity; for the miracles
of Christ were performed for the purpose of calling
the dead to life ; the miracles of Loyola were per-
formed to draw the living towards death. The
first and the last words of Christ were life. The
first and last words of Loyola were a corpse.
Christ caused Lazarus to come forth from the
sepulchre ; Loyola sought to make of every man
a Lazarus in the tomb. Once more, I ask, what
point of resemblance is there between Christ and
Loyola ?
I know that some candid persons have not been
able to prevent themselves from feeling surprised
at the nature of the Sjnritual Exercises, and the
undeniable quotations which I have thought it
THE DISCIPLINE OR TACTICS OF THE ORDER.
37
necessary to make. They escape from the dilemma
liy imagining that it is no doubt a code, a law which
has fallen into disuse, and that it now goes for nought
in the Society of Jesus. I cannot leave them even
this I'esource. No; the hook of Spiritual Exercises is
not out of use. On the contrary, it is the basis, not
only of the authority of Loyola, but of the education
of the whole society ; whence arises the necessity
either of accepting it as a whole, or, in thi'owing it
aside, of throwing aside also the company of which
it is the vital principle. There is no middle course,
for, according to the company, it is a work inspired
from above; the mother of God dictated it, dictante
Maria. Loyola only transcribed it under the in-
fluence of a divine inspiration.
I do not wish it to be thought that in the ex-
amination of this work I have maliciously chosen
the most surprising portions, and those most likely
to embarrass my antagonists. I have extracted
only the chief points ; there are, besides, some ridicu-
lous ones which contain the principle of those max-
ims and subterfuges which Pascal attacked. Would
it be believed, for instance, that Loyola, that man so
serious in his asceticism, could be brought by his own
system to play at, to feign maceration ? What ! sport
with that which should be most spontaneous, with
the sacred flagellations of Madeleine and of Francis
of Assisi! Yes, whatever may be the consequence,
in order to pass in review the whole system, I must
quote the words of the fundamental book, the Spiri-
tual Exercises; and do not smile, I beseech you;
for I can imagine nothing more sad than such fall-
ings off. The whole thought is here expressed :
— " Let us principally make use in flagellation,"
says Loyola, " of small cords which wound the skin,
by grazing the outside without reaching the inner
portion, ia order that the health may not suffer *."
What ! from the beginning, in the ideal rules,
before degeneration takes place, coldly to mimic
the marks and wounds of the anchorites and fathers
of the desert, who condemned upon their suffering
backs the rebellion of the old man ! Martyrdom
is imposed upon saints alone: I know it well ! but to
act martyrdom, to sham fortitude, to simulate
such a thing was possible. Who would believe that
sanctity, who would ever have conceived that
such a thing was written, commanded, ordained in
the law ? In this first deception do you not see the
birth of the dreadful punishment and the truthful
scourge of the Provincial Letters ?
We are now in the very heart of the doctrine.
Let us continue in this path. The book of Spiri-
tual Exercises is the trap perpetually set by the
society ; but how are souls to be drawn towards
it 1 Once drawn, how can they be fixed, how com-
municate to them, little by little, the desire of
fixing on this bait, of engaging in these gymnastics?
how can they be yoked by degrees without their
suspecting it ? That is a new secret, disclosed in
another work almost as extraordinary as the first;
I speak of the Directoriiim. A few years subse-
quent to the formation of the society, the principal
members communicated with one another for the
purpose of relating their personal exiJeriences of
the application of Loyola's method. The chief of
the order, Aquaviva, a man of consummate policy,
* Quare flagellis potissiraum utemur ex funiculis minutis,
qua; exteriores aflligunt pirtes, non autem adeo interiores,
ut valetudinem adversam causare possint.
took pen in hand : and from him sprang that
second work, equally fundamental, and which
stands in the same relation to the first, as practice
does to theory. You have seen the principle ; here
are the tactics brought into action. To attract any
one toward the society, you must be careful not to
act abruptly, ex ahrupto ; a proper occasion must be
sought ; for instance, when the person is suffering
from external misfortunes, or from failure in some
mercantile undertaking *. An excellent auxiliary
may be found even in rices -f.
In the beginning, care must be taken to avoid
proposing as examples those who, having taken the
first step, have been induced to enter the order ;
or at least that is a thing on which one should be
silent to the last :J: . If persons of any import-
ance or of noble families § are concerned, you must
beware of giving them the Exercises complete. In
every case it is much better that the teacher should
visit the pupils, because the thing is then more
easily kept secret ||. But why should so many secrets
exist in what relates to God ?
In the generality of cases the first thing to be
done is to consign the person destined to the Exer-
cises to the solitude of a cell. . . There, deprived of
the sight of man, and, above all, of his friends ^, he
should be visited only by his teacher, and by a mo-
rose attendant, who will open his lips only on mat-
ters connected with his employment. In this strict
solitude, the book of Spiritual Exercises should be
placed in his hands, and then he should be left
alone. Every day, the teacher ( instructor ) should
visit him for a moment to question him, to excite
him, and to urge him forward past recal in this path.
At last, when this soul is thus removed out of its
element, and shattered, and has cast itself willingly
into the mould of Loyola, when it experiences
the irresistible embrace, when it is sufficiently
shaken, and, to speak in the words of the Directorium,
it is choked as it were in the agon i/ **, admire the
triumph of this holy diplomacy ! The part played
by the teacher suddenly changes: before, he pressed,
he excited, he inflamed; now that all is accomplish-
ed, a studied indifference must be maintained. No,
nothing more profound, I should saj' more infernal,
has been discovered than the patience, the slow-
ness, the coldness shown at the moment when the
soul belongs no longer to itself. " It is proper,"
says the Directorium, " to allow the soul to breathe a
little f f ." "When it has taken breath J:}: to a certain
degree," is the favourable moment, for it must not
be " continually tortured §§ ." That is to say, when
the agonized soul has entirely given itself uj), you
coldly leave it the choice |||| ; it is necessary that in '
• Ut si non bene ei succedant negotia. — Directorium,
p. 16.
t Etiam optima est conimoditas in ipsis vitiis. — lb. p. 1 7.
t Certd hoc postremnm tacendum. — lb. p. IS.
§ Et quidam aliquando nobiles. — lb. p. 67.
II Quia sic facilius res celatur. — 74. p. 75. It is important
that the whole should take place in the eovntrj, in aliquod
prrsdiitm, p. 77.
V Maxime familiarium.— JJ. p. 39.
• * In ilia quasi agonia suffocatur.— /S. p. 223.
+ + Sineiitius est aliquando respirare. — lb. p. 215.
I I Cum deinde quodammodo respirat.— /i. p. 223.
§ § Non semper afnigatur. — lb. p. 216.
II II Electionem. A good instructor should know how to
encourage and even slightly excite doubt. Eum lelinquat
aliquantura dubium et incertum. — lb. p. 1S2.
38
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
that brief interval of rest, it should merely preserve
enough of life to imagine itself fi-ee to alienate itself
for ever. Let it return if it will into the world, let
it enter another order if that pleases it better ; the
doors are open, now that it is hampered by the
thousand ties which the teacher has drawn around
it ; the wonder is, that it should be pretended that
that exhausted heart should be able to exert one
moment of free will, so as to plunge itself into ever-
lasting slavery. Recollect all the Machiavellian com-
binations with which your memory is stored, and tell
me if you discover any thing which surpasses the
tactics of this order in its private contests with the
soul.
The individual is subdued : it now remains to
learn what he becomes in the bosom of the society;
and this leads us to a hasty consideration of the
spirit of the Constitutions*. One characteristic of Loy-
ola's genius was, that he began by closing against
his disciples the avenues to ecclesiastical benefices;
by that single word he established a church within
the Church. By interdicting to his disciples all
hopes beyond the company, he knew tliat he should
fill them with unbounded ambition to enlarge the
authority of the order. All being walled up in the
Institution of Jesus, it became necessary that each
should labour with extraordinary energy, to exalt,
adorn, and glorify his prison ; none can become
either bishop, cardinal, or pope ; all will have their
share in the immortality of the order. But, how
singular is that immortality! In the Spiritual Ex-
ercises the traces at least of the past enthusiasm
appear. In the Constitutions all is cold, frozen like
the vaults of those catacombs in which are sym-
metrically arranged vast piles of bones. All this
is very ingeniously contrived ; the edifices which
the sun of life lights up are imitated, but, unhappily,
they are constructed witii the remains of the dead ;
and a society thus established may exist a long
time, without being worn out, for the great princi-
ple of life lias been withheld from the very begin-
ning.
Loyola, before proclaiming any one of his rules,
solemnly placed it for eight days upon the altar ;
whether it related to the principle of his law, or
merely to a school regulation, to the cai'e of the in-
firmary, to the porter, the keeper of the wardrobe,
or the mysteries of the conscience, — he bestowed on
all these things the same sacred authority, abasing
the great to exalt the little. In his legislation you
may discover the same mistrust of the reason, as you
do in his ascetic books. Among all the founders of
Christian institutions, I first observe the Christian,
the man himself, the creature of God ; in the law
of Loyola, I behold nothing but provincial fathers,
rectors, examiners, consulters and admonitors, pro-
curators, ])refect of spiritual things, prefect of the
health, — a prefect of the library, prefect of the refec-
tory, watchman, stewai'd, &c. Each of these func-
tionaries obeys a particular law, clearly and positive-
ly laid down ; it is impossible that each should not
be perfectly awai-e of the duties belonging to every
hour of the day. Is this all I Yes, if a temporal,
external association is concerned ; almost nothing,
if a really Christian society is concerned. I see, in
fact, that the duties are admirably distributed, that
each functionary has his distinct task: but show me
beneath all this, a Christian spirit ; in the midst of
so many duties, so many denominations, so many
• Regulas Societatis : The Rules of the Order.
worldly occupations; man escapes my view, the
Christian vanishes.
Moral, spiritual life is kept out of sight in this
law; examine it in all good faith, without prejudice,
and ask yourselves, if you will, at each page, if the
word of God constitutes the basis of this scaffolding;
in order that this should be, the name of God should
at least be uttered; and I affirm that that is the
name which most rarely appears. The experience
of a man of business, a complicated machinery, a
wise arrangement of persons and things, the antici-
pated regularity of a code of procedure, take the
place of the prayers, the exaltations which constitute
the substance of other rules. The founder confides
greatly in industrial combinations, very little in the
resources of the soul; and in this rule of the Society
of Jesus all is found except faith in the Gospel and
name of Jesus Christ.
This is the most important characteristic of
this legislation. For the first time, the saints con-
fide no longer in the spiritual power of Christ ;
in order to re-establish his dominion, they make a
direct appeal to calculations, borrowed from the
policy of cabinets. The spirit of Charles V. and
Philip II. are substituted for the spirit of the
Gospel.
From this seal of mistrust, profoundly imprinted
upon the spiritual work of Loyola, you necessarily
behold the whole form of his institution spring. In
the first place, since it is the mind itself that is sus-
pected, it follows that all the members of the com-
munity, instead of feeling themselves united in a
calm, brotherly manner in the faith, like the early
Christians, regai'd one another as so many un-
believers ; fi-om which it results that, in the very
first page, instead of the prayer, which forms the
introduction and basis of other rules, the prac-
tice of informing is recommended as the foun-
dation of Loyola's constitution * . To denounce
one another, are almost the first woi'ds of the
rule, constitute the hrst concessions to the logical
spirit. The soldiery of Loyola is no longer com-
posed of such as are inspirited by enthusiasm to
battle openly in the light of day ; by its very
origin, it will be no longer the Tlieban legion, but
the organized police of Catholicism. Secondly, in
accordance with the same principle, if the soul is
no longer the prime mover of all, it is nothing
but a suspicious object, whence arises the necessity
of weighing it down beneath a cadaverous yoke of
obedience, not intelligent but blind — obedientia cceca.
This is why submission in other orders is nothing
in comparison to this voluntary death of the con-
science. However much other societies may dis-
tinguish themselves by the practice of other
virtues, that of the Company of Jesus consists pre-
eminently in self-abnegation. Among the Trappists,
man is enabled to preserve an internal I'efuge in his
own silence and martyrdom ; among the Jesuits, the
soul, in spite of itself, is compelled to take itself
by surprise, to escai)e from itself, and to narrow
itself by application to exte nal employments.
Another consequence which is compi'ehended
within the two first, is the systematic necessity
imposed of repressing all great instincts, and of
developing the smaller ones. It has been i-emarked,
that the Society of Jesus, so fruitful in able men,
has never produced any great man, except Loyola.
* Manifestare sese invicem . . quscumque per quemvis
manifestantur. — Regul. Societ. p. 2.
RELIGION REDUCED TO A LEGAL FORM.
39
Til is is the unauswerable reason ; the Castilian
pride of Loyola impressed him with the notion that
his disciples would be incapable of bearing up, like
him, under the trials of spiritual warfare and enthu-
siasm, whence he stifled in his followers the heroic
ecstasies which constituted his own power. I will
not pause to consider whether this pride of the
Spanish saint is consistent with the Gospel. I
only remark, that in withholding from his followers
the inconvenience of enthusiasm and divine forti-
tude, he prevented any one of them from rising
to his own height ; and I warn you that to conform
to his law, is nothing else than to make a vow of
mediocrity. Only imagine a great poet, Dante,
for instance, desirous of forming a school, and
fortifying his disciples against the dangers of
sensibility, of imagination, of poetical passions, —
he would act precisely as Ignatius Loyola did. In
other orders, we behold men equal the founders ;
their life increases from generation to generation.
The Dominican St. Thomas was greater than St.
Dominick ; but who ever heard in the Society of
Jesus of a man who equalled or surpassed the
founder ? This, from the very nature of things, is
impossible.
Add this last consideration, which comprehends
the preceding ones, that the Order of Jesus repre-
sents exactly in its development the personal history
of Ignatius Loyola. In the first place, the early dis-
ciples, the St. Francis Xaviers, the Borgias, the
Rodriguez, the Bobadillas, are tilled with the
fire which the master acquired in the solitude of
the grotto of Manreza ; an enthusiastic genius
leads them on. By the second generation, all is
changed ; the icy policy of Loyola in its maturity is
bequeathed to the Aquavivas and his successors.
To speak more justly, it is the soul of Loyola
which seems to grow cold, to congeal more and
more in the veins of the Society of Jesus. The
society imitates its author during three centuries ;
and the expiring order of the present day imitates
him still, re-produces him, even in death ; like him
it raises itself to a sitting posture when it was
thought lost ; and, in the midst of its agony, the
word to which it gives utterance is still the last
word of Loyola, — dominion, blind obedience, 06^-
dientia cceca. Let humanity bend like a staff in
the hand of an old man — ut scnis haculus ! This
was the bequest of the founder — it is the last wish
of the society.
By following the same series of ideas, it will not
be difficult for me to show how, from the same
negative principle, the same want of faith in the
Spirit, sprung the Theory of Cases of Conscience,
which, with many persons, constitutes the distinc-
tive characteristic of Jesuitism. The principle of
Loyola was necessarily calculated to produce and
develop the application of legal formulcB to the
conscience. In fact, from the moment when the
soul is mistrusted, when the cry of conscience is
disregarded, all must be written. The written
word takes the place of the internal word, the
rules of doctors necessarily replace the word and the
light created for the purpose of enlightening every
man that enters the world. The less a society has
of vitality, the more it possesses of ordinances,
decrees, and laws, which contradict and clash one
against the other. Apply this to religious life, and
see into what a labyrinth you enter ! As the soul
no longer possesses the right of deciding every
thing by one of those sovereign words, which are
written by God Hhnself, and which proceed from
the very innermost being of man, these rules en-
tiiil other rules, these decisions other decisions;
and it is impossible that beneath this scaffolding
of contradiction the moral instinct should not be
overwhelmed. By an inconceivable contradiction,
which is only the consequence of its principle,
it is no longer the religious law, which, by the
simplicity of its nature, governs the civil law.
It is, on the contrary, the religious law which
miserably, shamefully, comes to imitate, — what ?
the laws of civil procedure, the subtleties of courts
of law. It is the divine law, which, overthrown
and degraded from its sublime unity, comes to con-
form itself to the method and humiliation of the
scholastic tribunals.
Has not religion fallen enough ? Instead of the
priest, I behold the special pleader at the tribunal
of God. — Well ! it must fall stili lower ; for in
this path there is no pause. The jurisprudence of
the scholastic system was at least corrected by a
basis of equity, which prevented the judge from
voluntarily involving himself in absurdity ; the
priest, by consenting to follow the procedure
of the middle age, condemned himself to de-
scend infinitely lower. No longer confiding to the
moral instinct in its divine simplicity, and not pos-
sessing the rational independence of the juris-
consult, whither can this man be carried, with his
conscience voluntarily dumb, and his reason volun-
tarily blinded ? Whither can he go, except along
the road of chance and probabilities, where, con-
founding with one another in the darkness the
notion of good and the notion of evil, engaging
himself more and more beyond the limits of truth
in a monstrous abyss, cunning only in putting re-
morse to sleep, he often foresees, imagines, and
creates in theory impossible crimes ?
Do not wonder then that degeneration was so ra-
pid, since it was contained in the very ideal of the
society : I could, if I would, bring to bear on this
subject some strange testimonies. Listen to the
terrible confession which escaped from one of the
most famous disciples of Loyola, from one of those
who approached the nearest to his genius, from one
of his contemporaries, Mariana ! It is not I who
speak, but a member of the Institution of Jesus,
after having passed fifty years in the community: —
" Our whole institution," he says, " seems to have
no other object than to bury under the earth our
evil actions, and to conceal them from the know-
ledge of men*". I might add to this confession
some astonishing avowals omitted by Pascal, as
the way to obtain the good-will of princes, of
widows, and of noble and opulent young men. I
might go very far on in this path ; but I abstain.
It is not necessiu-y to say what it is attracts you
to this discussion. It is neither its relation with
the times in which we live, nor the curiosity of
scandal. You are interested because the question
is in itself great, universal : let us allow it to
retain this character. The question is between
reality and appearance, truth and falsehood, the
life and the letter. Whenever a doctrine endea-
vours to imitate the life which it has lost, you may
• Totum regimen nostrum videtur hunc habere scopum,
lit malefacta injecta terra occultentur, et homiuum notitiae
subtraliantur.
40
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
discover the principle and the element of Jesuitism
as well among the ancients as among the modei-us.
It would not be difficult to show that every religion
has, at one time or other, produced its Jesuitism,
which is nothing else than its degeneration.
Without leaving the sphere of our tradition, the
Pharisees are the Jesuits of the Mosaical system, as
the Jesuits are the Pharisees of Christianity. Did
not the Pharisees likewise distrust the spirit ? Did
not they ask what the spirit is ? Were they not
the determined defenders of the letter ? Did not
Christ compare them to sep\ilchres ? Is not this
also the comparison most affected by our modern
ones in their Constitutions ? If this be true, where-
in is the difference ? And if there is no difference,
Christ has ju-onounced his opinion by accursing the
scribes, and the doctors of the law.
Take, then, care — and here I address myself to
those who, separated from me, exhibit the great-
est aversion to me— take care that you do not shut
yourselves up alive in those tombs ; you will re-
pent when it is too late. There are still great
things to be done ; remain where the combat of the
spirit is taking place — where are danger, life, re-
ward. Do not lose yourselves, do not bury your-
selves in these catacombs: you know it as well as
I do; God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living.
I will, if it be necessarj', admit for a moment
that, on emerging from the middle age, some
minds, carried away by an excess of asceticism, may
have found it necessary to submit themselves to
this dry and icy rule. I will admit that these ef-
forts of the middle age, suddenly compressed by an
overwhelming method, may have turned, if not to
great thoughts, at least to bold enterprises. But in
our days, in 1843, what does this doctrme come to do
in the world 1 What does it give us that we do
not possess as it is in too great abundance ? AVe,
now, above all things, all of us, hunger and thirst
after sincerity and truth. This society teaches us
manoeuvres and stratagems, as if there were not
enough nianojuvre and stratagem in the visible
course of affaii-s ! We cannot live without liberty ;
it brings us absolute dependence, as if shackles did
not sufficiently abound. We want an interpreta-
tion, spiritual, great, powerful, open to all, regene-
rating ; it gives us an interpretation, narrow, small,
material, as if there were not enough of material-
ism in the age. We want life ; it gives us the
letter. In a woi'd, it brings nothing to the world
with which the world is not surfeited ; and this is
why the world will have nothing more to say to it !
Consider, moreover, that if there is a country on
the face of the earth, the temper of which is incom-
patible with the Society of Jesus, it is France. Of
all the first generals of the order, of all those who
gave it its momentum, not one was a Frenchman.
No one has communicated the spirit of our country
to this combination of the leaven of Spam and of the
Machiavellism of Italy in the sixteenth century.
I can understand how, where it has its root.s, even
when combated by public opinion, the spirit of the
institution can produce statesmen and controversial-
ists, Mai'ianas, Bellarmins, Aquavivas. But among
us, ti'ansplanted from its native soil, sterile itself,
Jesuitism can do nothing but spi'ead sterility.
Every thing here contradicts and hurtles against it.
If we are worth any thing, it is for oui- spontaneous
energy — the reverse is the case with Jesuitism ; it
is for our good faith, even to indiscretion, to the
advantage of our enemies, — whilst Jesuitism is
wholly the reverse ; it is for the rectitude of
our minds, — Jesuitism delights in subtleties and
concealed intentions ; it is for a certain aptitude
to inflame ourselves in the cause of others, — the
society is all for itself ; it is, in fine, for the power
of our reason, — and it is reason that this community
above all things distrusts.
What then do we want with an institution which
is careful to repudiate in every thing the character
of the mission which God himself has given to our
country ? I now see distinctly that it is not alone
the spirit of the Revolution that is attacked, as I
lately advanced; the very existence of the national
spirit of France is in danger. Two incompatible
principles are in combat, one of which must destroy
the other. Jesuitism must destroy the spii'it of
France, or France must destroy the spirit of Jesu-
itism. This is the result of all I have told you.
LECTURE THE FOURTH*.
ON THE JESUIT MISSIONS.
It is not our fault, if in the path on which we have
entered, we are obliged to take care that our parts
are not shifted. Our strength lies in the openness
of our position ; and if it happens to be misinter-
preted in a place f from which all France is address-
ed, we owe a word of explanation to remarks which
fall from so great a height. We are accused of
pursuing a phantom. It would be easy to answer
that we pursue nothing, that we are only describing
the past : but, I will ask, if you talk of phantoms,
why so much hatred and so many efforts made to
prevent its even being mentioned ? If Jesuitism is
dead, why so much violence ? If living, why deny
it? Why? Because now, as ever, it has been in
too great haste to show itself; because it has been
betrayed by its impatience ; because in showing it-
self it has run the risk of destroying itself. But
• Delivered May 31st. t Chamber of Deputies, May 27th.
our trouble will not have been in vain if we have
contributed to bring it into the light of day. It is
now too late to deny its existence.
The only thing that astonishes me is, that we
have been accused of attacking freedom of instruc-
tion, because we have maintained the right of free
discussion. What, we the violent, we the intolerant ?
Who would have thought it ? Violent, because we
have defended ourselves ? Intolerant, because we
have not been exclusive ? All this is strange, it must
be confessed. The tolerance which is required is
permission to condemn, to fulminate, without giving
the power to answer. The common riglit which is
claimed, is it the privilege of anathema ? At least
this should l>ave been clearly confessed.
Of what avail are all these tricks, when the
question can be expressed in one word ? Will
France, deprived of all association, abandon the
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.
41
future to a strange and powerful association, natural-
ly and necessarily the enemy of France ? Without
• any circumlocution, I will only say, that I behold, in
the past, Jesuitism acquiring dominion over the
spirit, to materialize it; over morality, to demoralize
it ; and it is my earnest hope that no one in these
days may acquire dominion over liberty to destroy it.
However this may be, let us give ourselves the
pleasure of considering our subject in its largest
and most general relations. Jesuitism, in its origin,
took upon itself the task of putting an end to ido-
latry and protestantism. Let us see how it accom-
plished the first of these undertakings.
At the time of the discovery of America and
Eastern Asia, the first thought of the religious or-
ders was to bind these new worlds in the unity
of the Christian faith. Dominicans, Franciscans,
Augustins entered immediately on this path ; they
were weary with holding in check the old world ;
their sti'ength no longer sufficed to embrace the
new. Scarcely was it formed, before the Society of
Jesus entered upon this career ; and it was that
which it pursued with most glory. To unite the
East and the West, the North and the South, to
establish moral obligations which should bind the
whole world, to accomplish the unity promised by
the prophets — never did a greater design present
itself to the mind of man. To attain this end would
have required the all-powerful life of Christianity
at its very commencement. Were the doctrines
which constituted the soul of the Society of Jesus,
capable of consummating this miracle ?
For the first time, unknown populations wei'e to
come in contact with Christianity ; that moment
could not fail of exerting an incalculable influence
on the future. The Society of Jesus, by throwing
itself into the van, could decide or compromise the
universal alliance. Which of these two things
happened ?
In Eastern Asia Christianity discovered the
strangest thing in the world, a sort of Catholicism
peculiar to the East, a i-eligion replete with outward
analogies to that of the court of Rome, a Pagan-
ism with all the forms and many of the dogmas of
papacy, — a God born of a Virgin, incarnate for the
salvation of men, a Trinity, monasteries, convents
without number, anchorites devoted to macerations
and incredible flagellations, the whole exterior of
the religious life of Europe in the middle age, her-
mitages, relics, chivalry; at the summit a sort of
pope, who, without commanding, exercised an au-
thority as infallible as that of God himself. What
would the Catholicism of Europe do when confront-
ed with the Catholicism of India 1 Would it con-
sider it as the degeneration of a principle common
of yore both to one and the other ? Or would it
consider it as an imitation of the truth framed by
the evil spirit ? The chances of religious alliance
were very different according to the solution given
to this strange problem.
In this enterprise the Society of Jesus remained
in Asia what it had been in Europe ; it repeated
there m the history of its missions the diverse
phases of the character of its author.
Its precui'sor in the Indies was Francis Xavier
of Navarre. He had been among the first to re-
ceive the impulse of Ignatius Loyola. Born, like
liim, of an ancient family, he had left the paternal
castle to visit Paris and study philosophy and the-
ology. At St. Barbe, Loyola fired him with his
own young enthusiasm. Xavier never understood
the revolution which rejjlaced in the mind of the
founder, the hermit by the politician. Sent into
Portugal, and fi-om thence to the Indies, before
the Society had a recognized existence, lie pre-
served the spirit of heroism with scarcely any
mixture of human calculation. When we meet
in his letters with such words as the following
" Frame all your words and actions with your
friends, as if they were, some day, to become your
enemies" — we think we perceive one of the last
counsels of Loyola as it fell into his transparent
heart.
This man, still young, having just left the bril-
liant castle of Navarre, appearing alone as a
wanderer on the shores of Malabar, will ever be a
subject of great admiration. In that marvellous
India he at first beheld none but those who dwelt
without the cities, the miserable castes, the
banished, the pariahs, the little children; as soon
as the sun went down, he was to be seen taking a
little bell, and going about from hut to hut, ex-
claiming— " Good people, pray to God !" He ap-
proaches the source of Oriental knowledge, but sees
it not ; he believes the opposition he encounters to
be only that of childish minds ; whilst, in fact, he
is already surrounded by Brahminical colleges. In
this holy ignorance of his situation, he sends home
for priests who are able neither to confess, to
preach, nor to teach ; he thought it quite sufficient
if they could baptize. In the name of the infant
Christ, Xavier cuts an invisible path to Cape
Comorin; he takes possession of infinite solitudes,
of shoreless seas, escaping, by the greatness of
things, from the narrow influences of the rule
of Loyola: the populations among which he travels
consider hira as a holy man ; in that consists
his safety.
At Cape Comorin he embarks and traverses
in a little felucca the great Indian ocean. Im-
pelled, as he believes, by the breath of the Holy
Ghost, he reaches the Moluccas, and, after infinite
trouble, the kingdom of Japan. At this exti'emity
of the East he finds himself, for the first time, in
contact, not with untrained minds, but with a
religion armed at all points, with Bimddism and
its living ti'aditions ; instead of being disconcerted,
he argues, in a language of which he knows
only a few words, or, rather, it is his mannei-,
his sincerity, his faith, which argue and at-
tract ; his soul dwelt in the regions of miracles.
But this island of Japan soon becomes too small
for his great desire of proselytism ; at all hazards
he must penetrate into China, that closed world.
He crosses to the island of Sancham, the nearest
to the continent. In a few days a boatman under-
takes to carry him at night to the gates of Canton.
His faith would do the rest. The boatman did
not keep his promise, and he dies of impatience
and hope deferred at the gates of the great em-
pire. This, is what the enthusiasm of an isolated
man, without support, without companions, without
immediate hope of assistance from the Society,
succeeded in doing. His faith and love cast around
hira a halo which preserved him, and opened
every road to hira. Strange people, who under-
stood not his language, saw on his face the im-
press of the man of God; in spite of themselves,
they recognized and saluted him. The fascination
was contagious ; a single man had landed on those
42
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
shores, aud already there was a Christian Asia.
After the sanctity of one, let us see what calcula-
tion, and cunning, and numbers were able to effect.
Along the road opened by the enthusiasm of
Xavier, a new generation of missionaries crowded,
bringing with them the book of the Constitutions,
a code of maxims and instructions which they had
profoundly studied.
If all this policy was to result in the establish-
ment of religion, was it the Christian dogma which
was presented for the belief of the new nations ?
Were so many manceuvres to end in imposing the
Gospel by surprise ? Here the stratagem appears
in all its greatness. It was seriously expected
that the Oriental world would fall into'the greatest
trap that was ever laid ; it was believed that these
vast populations, confirmed in their religion by
the experience of so many centuries, would rush
into the snare ; a false Gospel was held out to
them, in the belief that there would be always
time to give them the new one. From Japan to
Malabar, from the Archipelago of the Moluccas to
the banks of the Indus, an attempt was made to
envelop islands and continents in a net of fraud,
by giving to this other universe a false god in
a false church. And it is not 1 who thus speak.
I am supported by the first authoi-ities, by popes,
such as Innocent X., Clement IX., Clement XII.,
Benedict XIII., Benedict XIV., who, in an un-
interrupted succession of decrees, letters, briefs,
bulls, have attempted perpetually, but vainly, to
bring back the missionaries of the Society of
Jesus to the spirit of the Gospel. It is a remark-
able circumstance, which shows the power of the
system, that the same men who are formed to
sustain the papacy, as soon as they ai'e no longer
under its hand, turn round against its decrees with
more violence than all the orders put together ; it
was not their fault if they did not succeed in abolisli-
ing in those distant countries not only Papacy, but
Christianity itself.
What was the change they imparted to it ?
Did lliey impregnate it with another life ? did they
adapt it to the manners, climate, necessities of a
new world ? No ! What then did they do ? Not
much, in truth. These men of the Society of
Jesus, in teaching Christ, hid only one thing, the
passion, the agony, Calvary. These Christians
only denied th.e cross : illus pudct Christum passum
et criicifixum prcedicare. They were ashamed to
show Christ in the passion. These are the very
words of the congregation of cardinals and of
pope Innocent X. ; or if they did make use of the
cross, they hid it under the flowers which were
scattered at the feet of the idols ; so that whilst
they adored the idol in public, they thought it
lawful to refer their adoration to the hidden
object. Such were the stratagems by which they
thought to win empires and numberless peoples.
In the country of ])earls and precious stones,
these men, all for externals, thought they were
doing wonders in drawing minds to them, by
only showing Christ triumphant in the midst
of the presents of the Magi, reserving to them-
selves the power of communicating some portion
of the truth when conversion was effected and
baptism had been I'eceived. To compel them to
give up these absurd practices into which they
wei-e led by their system, decree upon decree was
required, charge upon charge, bull upon bull ;
letters were found insufficient. The pope was
obliged to interfere, as it were, in person. A pre-
late was sent, a Frenchman, the eai'dinal of Tour-
non, to put down this Christianity without the
cross, this Gospel without the passion; but scarcely
had he arrived, than the Society caused him to be
cast into prison, where he died of surprise and
of grief.
The dogma thus mutilated, the application was
immediately felt. If we may deny Christ, poor,
naked, suffering, what follows ? We may also deny
the poor, the banished and sacrificed classes ;
hence (for they did not slu'ink fi'om the logical con-
clusion) the refusal to grant the sacrament to the
humble, to the classes which were esteemed as out-
casts, to the pariahs *. To this, in fact, they did
come ; and in spite of the authority and the threats
of the decrees of 1645 of Innocent X., of 1669 of
Clement IX., of 1734, 1739, of Clement XII., of
the bull of 1745 of Benedict XIV., this monstrous
exclusion from Christianity of the poor, that is to
say, of those to whom it was first sent, was poj-
sisted in.
The condemnation, which the vicar apostolical of
Clement XI. pronounced at Pondicherry, in 1704, on
the very spot was, as follows: — " We cannot suffer
that the physicians of the soul should refuse to men
of low condition the duties of charity, which are not
refused to them even by the Pagan physicians,
Medici Gentiles.'" The expressions of Benedict XIV.,
in 1727, evince still more plainly this eagerness of the
missionaries to deny the wretched ones by whom St.
Francis Xavier commenced : — "We will and order
that the decree respecting the administration of the
Holy Sacraments to the dying of humble condition,
called Pariahs, should be at length obsei'ved and
executed without further delay, uHeriori dilatione
remota." In spite of this, however, twenty years
afterwards the papacy was compelled to thunder
anew on the same subject, and continued to do so
until the abolition of the society. Now these are
not prejudiced opinions, the assertions of enemies ;
they are facts stated by the authority before which
our adversaries are compelled to bow their heads.
Now I ask, are these Christian missions, or
Pagan missions ? At any rate how much have
they preserved of the spirit of the Gospel ? The
Apostles of Christ also found on emerging from
Judaja a world new to them, rich, proud, sensual,
full of gold and jewels, — above all, inimical to slaves.
Among these men was there one, who, in presence
of the splendour of Greece and Rome, dreamt of
dissembling the doctrine he was commissioned to
teach, of hiding the cross before the triumph of
Pagan sensuality ? In the midst of that world of
patricians, was there one who denied the slave ? On
the contrar'y, what they principally thrust in the
face of this proud society was God suffering, Christ
beaten, the Etex'nal plebeian in the manger of
Bethlehem. What St. Peter and St. Paul exhi-
bited at Rome in the midst of its intoxication was
the cup of Calvary, with the gall and hyssop of Gol-
gotha ; and that was the reason of their trium])h.
What did Rome want with a god invested with
gold and with power ? That image of force had
appeared to it a hundred times ; but to be mistress
of the world, to revel in the riches of the East, and
to meet with a god naked and scourged, who
* Infirmis etiam abjectas et infiiuee conditionis, vulgo
dictis Farias.
THE PUNISHMENT OF THEIR DENIAL OF THE CROSS.
43
aspired to win it by the cross of the slave, this it
was that astonished, struck, and in the end sub-
jugated it.
Suppose that instead of all this, the Apostles, the
missionaries of Judsea, had attempted to take the
world by surprise, to adapt themselves to it, to ex-
hibit only that part of the Gospel which was ana-
logous to Paganism, that they had concealed Calvary
and the sepulchre from the voluptuous denizens of
Greece and Rome, that instead of imparting to the
earth the word in its integrity, they had only suf-
fered to be seen that which would please the earth;
in a word, imagine that the Apostles in their mis-
sions had followed the same policy with the mis-
sionaries of the Society of Jesus, — I say that they
would have met in their attempts upon the Roman
world with the same success which the Jesuits en-
countered in the Eastern world; that is to say, that
after a momentar}' success, obtained by surprise, they
would soon have been rejected and extirpated by
the society for which they had laid a trap. Princes,
cunningly circumvented, might have lent their ear
fur a moment; but the minds of so many patricians, of
so many Roman matrons, would not have taken such
root in the Gospel as to defy every tempest. A few
gay persons would have been attracted by tlie promise
of futurity acquired without trouble ; but the re-
jected slaves would not have hastened to meet the
slave God. In a war of policy against policy, the
art of Tiberius and Domltian would doubtless have
countervailed that which was opposed to it. The
manoeuvres of the world mixed with the Gospel,
without deceiving the world, would have dried up
the Gospel in its sources; the result of these strata-
gems would have been, by corrupting the doctrine
of Christ, to have deprived of it, for a long time, the
deceived and at the same time undeceived world.
Such is the history of the Society of Jesus, in its
celebrated missions to the East. We have too much
accustomed ourselves in these times to believe that
cunning can bi'ing any thing to pass. See to what
it comes when it is applied on the great scale of
humanity. Follow the history of their vast un-
dertakings on the coast of Malabar, in China,
— above all, in Japan. Read, study these events
in the writers of the order, and compare the pro-
ject with the result! The liistory of these missions
is in itself very uniform : at the outset an easy
success ; the head of the country, the emperor,
gained ovei*, seduced, surrounded; a portion even of
the population following the conversion of its chief;
then, at a given time, the chief discovering, or
believing to discover, an imposition ; after this,
reaction as violent, as in the first instance con-
fidence was extreme ; the population deserting at
the same time with the chief ; persecution up-
rooting the souls really acquired ; the mission
hunted out, leaving scarcely a vestige behind ;
the Gospel compromised, shipwrecked on an ac-
cursed land, which remains for ever desert : such
is the summary of all these histories.
And yet who can read them without admira-
tion ! What ability ! What resources ! Wlmt
knowledge of details ! What courage ! How little
am I understood if I am believed not to feel all
these things 1 What heroism among individuals !
What obedience among the inferiors ! What com-
bination among the superiors ! Patience, fervour,
audacity could no further go.
But that which is more surprising even than
all this, is, that all these labours, all tiiis devotion,
produce no lasting effects. How did this come to
pass ? Because, if individuals were devoted, the
maxims of the body were corx'upt. Was any
thing similar ever beheld ? The society deserves
more our pity than our anger. Who has laboured
more, and reaped less ? It has sown the sand :
for having mixed cunning with the Gospel, it has
experienced the strangest punishment ; and this
punishment consists in perpetual toil and per-
petual disappointment. That which it raises with
one hand in the name of the Gospel, it destroys
with the other in the name of policy. Alone it
has received this terrible law — that it shoidd pro-
duce martyrs, and that tlie blood of its martyrs
should produce nothing but thistles.
Where in the vast East are its establishments,
its colonies, its spiritual conquests ? In those
powerful islands where it reigned for a while,
what remains of it I Who remembers it ? In
spite of so many private virtues, of so much blood
bravely spilt, the breath of deceit has pierced there
and dissipated every thing. The Gospel, carried
thither by a spirit opposed to it, would not grow
and flourish. Rather than give encouragement
to inimical doctrines, it preferred itself to perish.
This was the result of the trap set to catch the
whole world.
But I hear it said, They have nevertheless
done one great thing in the East. Yes, certainly.
What ? They have opened the way for England.
— Ah ! I am in waiting for them there ; for there
the punishment is complete. Mark this : the mis-
sionaries of the Society of Jesus, the heralds, the
defenders, the heroes of Catholicism, opened the
way for Protestantism ! The representatives of
the papacy prepared the extremity of the world for
Calvin and for Luther ! Does not that seem a
malediction of Providence ? It exhibits them, at
least, in a depth of misery which must wring pity
even from their greatest enemies. (Applause.)
But this punishment has been inflicted on them
not in Eastern Asia alone; every where I see these
clever setters of snares taken in their own toils.
It is said that their most powerful adversaries,
the Voltaires, the Diderots, were formed in their
own schools ; and this is still true if you apply it
not only to individuals, but to territories, to whole
continents. Follow them into the vast Solitudes
of Louisiana and North America, — among their
most glorious fields of victory.
There too, other Francis Xaviers, sent by an
order of the chief, plunge singly and silently into
the midst of lakes and forests hitherto untraversed.
They embark in the canoe of the savuge; they fol-
low with him the course of mysterious rivers ;
they scatter the seed of the Gospel; and once again
the tempest of wrath dispei-ses it before it has
time to germinate. The evil genius of the society
treads secretly behind each of the missionaries,
and strikes the soil with sterility as soon as they
put in the plough. After a moment of hope every
thing disappears, destroyed by an invisible power.
The happy time of this savage Christianity was
in the midst of the seventeenth century. Already
in 17'"22, Pere Charlevoix followed in the steps of
these missions of the Society of Jesus. He scarcely
discovered any traces of them ; and these de-
fenders of Christianity were proved to have once
more worked only for their enemies ; and these
44
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
pretended apostles of the papacy opened a road
to Protestantism, which surrounded them before
they were aware of it. When tliey emerged from
the depths of the forest, where they had rivalled
the Indians in stratagem, they thought they had
been building for Rome, whilst they had been
building ouly for the United States ; once more
see the great policy of Providence, — cunning is
turned against cunning.
However, it was given to the Society of Jesus
to realize once, m the case of one people, the ideal
of its doctrines. During the space of a hundred
and fifty years it succeeded in infusing its whole
principle into the organization of Paraguay ; from
this political application you may estimate it in
its whole extent. In Europe, in Asia, it was
more or less opposed by the existing powei's ; but
in the solitudes of South America, a vast territory
was granted to it, with the power of applying to a
new nation, to tlie Indians of the Pampas, its
civilizing genius. It happened that its method of
education, wiiich extinguished nations in their
maturity, seemed to agree for a time wonderfully
well with these infant people ; it was enabled, with
a truly admirable intelligence, to attract them, to
group them, to isolate them, to keep them in an
eternal noviciate. They erected a republic of
children, in which every thing was conceded them
with wonderful ease, except that which can alone
develop the man in the newly-born.
Every one of these strange citizens of the re-
public of the Guaranis was expected to veil his
face before the fathers, to kiss the hem of their
robes ; transferring to the legislation of a whole
people the recollections of the schools of those
days, for the slightest fault men and women, even
magistrates, were whipped in the public squares.
From time to time vitality endeavours to display
itself among those people in swaddling-clothes ;
then there arise the cries of wild beasts, insurrec-
tions, revolts, which fi-om time to time expel, dis-
perse the missionaries ; after which, each man
returns to his former condition, as if nothing had
happened, — the crowd to its puerile dependence,
the teachers to their divine authority. The bre-
viary in one hand, and the rod in the othei-, a few
men lead and preserve this flock, the last remains
of the empire of the Incas. In itself this is a
great spectacle, especially if we add the infinite art
exhibited in cutting off communication with the
rest of the universe; and in spite of the silence
which is cast around, continual i-evolutions that
excite I know not what suspicions, which none
can shake off, neither the king of Spain, nor the
regular clergy, nor the pope. This education of
a people is consummated in profound mystery, like
a dark conspiracy. From time to time, when they
are prepared, the missionary fathers, according
to their own expressions, set out with their
neophytes to hunt the Indians as if they were
tigers, shut them up in enclosures reserved for
the purpose, and little by little appease, tame, and
bring them into the Church.
This Constitution was the triumph of the Society
of Jesus, because into it it was able to infuse its
whole soul and character. lint are we sure that
this mysterious colonization will be the germ of a
great empire ? Where is the sign of life * Every-
where else we at least hear the babblings of society
in the ci'adle. Here, I confess, I fear, that so much
silence in the same place during three centui-ies, is
of evil augury; and that the discipline which has so
quickly succeeded in enervating the virgin vigour
of nature, is not that which develops the Guata-
mozius and the Moutezumas. The Society of
Jesus has fallen, but its people of Paraguay survives
it, and is becoming more and more silent and
mysterious. Its frontiers are not to be traversed.
Its silence has redoubled, so has its despotism; the
Utopia of the Company of Jesus has been realized;
a state without movement, without noise, without
pulsation, without apparent I'espiration. God grant
that so nmcli mystei'y does not hide a corpse !
Thus, to recapitulate, a Machiavellian heroism,
entangling itself in its own toils, or which leaves in
its rear nothing but the silence of death, is the
result of all these stratagems to communicate the
word of life ; isolated successes, always uncertain,
and gained over tribes separated by deserts, over
families, over individuals; a perfect impotence as
soon as the struggle is undertaken with established
i-eligions, — Islamism, Brahminism, Bhuddism.
Nevertheless, to be just, we must accuse, not
ouly the policy of the Society of Jesus, but a more
deeply-seated evil. To evangelize the earth, what
do we pi-esent to the earth ? A divided Christianity.
That which began the evil in the missions, was
the conflict of the orders ; that which completed
it, was the conflict of creeds.
Everywhere we have seen, at the extremities
of the earth, Catholicism and Pz'otestantism mu-
tually paralyzing each other. Distracted by
these opposing influences, what could Islamism,
Brahminism, Bhuddism, do but wait until we
were all agreed i The first step to take, there-
lore, is to strive, nut to render discord eternal,
but to manifest the living unity of the Christian
world ; for we are not alone in the expectation of
one day uniting all people in the people of God.
Out of all the religious which divide the earth,
there is not one which does not aspire to encroach
upon and overwhelm the other, as it were by a
miracle. And yet, behold them, they no longer
undertake any thing serious one against the other ;
scarcely do they rob each other by surprise of one
or two individuals ; they have abandoned every
hope of an open contest. Something, I know not
what, tells them they cannot overcome one another.
Suppose that ages have passed away, you will find
them still in the same place, only more immoveable
still. In spite of all, if they remain as they are,
Catholicism will not extirpate Protestantism, or
Protestantism Catholicism.
Must we then give up all hopes of the unity, the
fraternity, the mural universality promised 2 This
would be to give up the cause of Christianity itself.
Live in indillerence, one by the side of the other,
as in the sepulchre, without any hope of a com-
munion of beans ? That would be the worst of
deaths. It would be impious and impossible to
reconmience blind and sanguinary struggles. In-
stead of wasthig our time in these sterile hatreds,
I think it would be nnich better to labour seriously
to develop in ourselves the heirloom and tradition
we have received. Fur in the midst of this pro-
found immobility of creeds, which keep one another
mutually in check, the future will belong not to
that which most successfully harasses its rival, but
to that which ventures to take a step in advance.
The rest will retire before this manifestation of life.
CRAFTY CONCILIATION OF THE WORLD WITH THE GOSPEL.
".:i
This step alone will open the empires, closed at
present to the missionaries of the letter. The
nations which now hang in suspense, and from
which nothing is expected, feeling the impulse of
the spirit re-entering the world, will raise them-
selves up, and complete their journey towards God.
Intestine war ceasing in Christendom, the task of
the missionary may at length be accomplished.
LECTUUE THE FIFTH.
POLITICAL THEORIES OF THE JESUITS : ULTRA-MONTANISM.
Among the dignitaries of the Church, a man*,
whose sincerity I respect, a bishop of Fr.ance, as-
serting the rights of his situation and of his con-
victions, in a letter made public, and directed in
part against my teaching, concludes with these
words, which are addressed to me, — "Since he
has been neither punished, nor censured, nor dis-
aroiced, it is evident that he has received his mission."
These words, clothed with high authority', compel
me to saj', what will give pleasure to my adver-
saries,— viz. that I have received my mission from
no one but myself. I have consulted only the
dignity, the rights of thought. I did not wait to
know whether I should be approved or censured,
before I determined to walk in this path, which I
conceive to be that of truth. If therefore it be an
error, under the reign of the Revolution, to assert
the right of discussion, if it be an error in the
spirit of Christianity to invoke unity instead of
discord, reality instead of appearance, life instead
of the letter, the fault is justly attributable to me
alone, and the more so as I feel that every day I
grow more rooted in my opinion, and that I have
passed the age at which men obey, without knowijig
it, an impulse from without. By what favour
should I have been chosen to speak in the name of
the Univei'sity ? I, who do not even belong to that
body ? No, gentlemen, the whole fault is mine ;
and if punishment is to be inflicted, let it be in-
flicted on me alone. {Applause.)
The character which we have discovered, from the
outset, impressed on the doctrine of the Society of
Jesus, exhibits itself very exactly in its internal eco-
nomyand government. The whole spirit of the Com-
pany is contained in the principle of domestic eco-
nomy I am about to unfold. The Society of Jesus has
succeeded, with wonderful ability, in conciliating
poverty and wealth. By poverty, she makes friends
with piety ; by riches, with power. But how can
these things be conciliated in its laws ? Thus : —
According to its rule, submitted to the Council of
Trent, it is composed of two kinds of establishments
of diSerent natures, — of professed houses incapable
of possessing any thing as property (that is the
essential part); and of colleges capable of acquiring,
inheriting, possessing (that is the accidental part) :
which is as much as to say, that the Society is
instituted so as to be able at the same time to refuse
and to accept, to live according to the Gospel, and
to live according to the world. Let us be more
precise. At the end of the sixteenth century, I
tind that it had twenty-one professed houses, and
two hundred and ninety-three colleges ; that is to
say, twenty-one hands to refuse, and two hundred
and ninety-three to accept and grasp. This, in two
words, is the secret of its internal economy. From
* The Bisliop of Chartres.
this let us pass to its relations with the external
and political world.
The Society of Jesus, in the midst of its foi'eign
missions, fell at length into its own toils. I wish to
day to examine if any thing similar has happened to
it in Europe; whether the policy of the sixteenth cen-
tury has not become, in its hands,a two-edged sword,
which has at length been turned against itself.
What is the character of a truly living religion,
in its relations with the political world ? It com-
municates its power to the states of which it becomes
the foundation ; it breathes a powerful breath of
life into the nation which conforms to its principle ;
it takes interest in their welfare, and gives them
support and protection. What would you say if,
instead of this life, which is as it were contagious,
you should And a religious society which, to what-
ever political form it is annexed, a monarchy, an
aristocracy, or a democracy, secretly declares itself
the enemy of this constitution, and labours to
undermine it, as though it were impossible to endure
any alliance with it I What will you say of a
society which, in whatever medium it is placed, has
the sovereign art of discovering, beneath the arti-
ficial forms of written laws and institutions, the
true principle of political life, and immediately
sets about destroying it I
As long as they existed, the religions of anti-
quity served as the basis of certain political f<n-ms;
Pantheism as that of the Oriental castes, and Poly-
theism as tliatof the republics of Greece and Rome.
In the case of Christianity something wholly new is
beheld — a creed which, without allying itself ex-
clusively with any political mould, is compatible
with every known system of society. Since it is life
itself, it distributes it to all who come in contact
Avitli it; to the feudal monarchies of the barbarians,
to the citizen republics of Tuscany, to the senatorial
republics of Venice and Genoa ; to the Spanish
Cortes ; to jmre, absolute, and limited monarchy;
to tribes and clans ; in one word, to every group
of the human family : and this religious soul, dis-
tributed everywhere, penetrating into all forms,
in order to develop and increase them, constitutes
the organization of the Christian world.
In the midst of all this, I perceive a strange cir-
cumstance which suddenly enlightens me as to the
nature of the Order of Jesus. Situated in the midst |
of a monarchy, it undermines it in the name of de-
mocracy*; and on the other hand, it undermines
democracy in the name of monarchy. Whatever
it may have been at the commencement, it ends,
strange to say, by being equally opposed to French
royalty under Henry III., to the English aris-
tocracy under James II., to the Venetian oligarchy,
to Dutch libertj^ to the Spanish, Russian, and
* Bellarmin, De Potestat. Summ. Pontif. c. v. p. 77.
46
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
Neapolitan autocracies. This is the cause wliy it has
been expelled thirty-nine times by governments
not only of different, but of antagonistic forms. A
period always arrives when these governments feel
convinced that the order is upon the point of
stifling amongst them the very principle of exist-
ence ; then, of whatever origin they may be, they
repel it after having invited it. We shall presently
see for the advantage of what theory the Society of
Jesus, in the end, causes the death of every positive
form of Constitution, of State, and of Political
Organization.
In examining the spirit of the first political
writers of the order, we perceive that they come
forward at the epoch of the formation of the great
monarchies of Europe, just at the moment when
they were completed. The future of Spain, of
France, of England, in the sixteenth century, be-
longed to royalty ; the life of nations and of states
was at that moment personified in it. Tiie pulsa-
tions, the throbbings of hfe of the modern nations,
on issuing from the middle age, are measured by
royal authority. In the absence of other institu-
tions, it represents at the end of the Revival the
laboui's of times gone by, — unity, nationality, the na-
tion ; and it is against that power that the writers
of the Society of Jesus declare themselves at the
outset : they lower it, they desire to mutilate it,
wherever it comprehends the principle of the ini-
tiative, and ventures to bear the banner.
But in the name of what idea do the Bellarmins,
the Marianas, seek to ruin it?
Who would believe it ? In the name of the sove-
reignty (if the people. "Monarchies," say this school,
" were beheld in dreams by Daniel, because they
are nothing but unreal spectres, and possess nothing
of reality, but a vain outward pomp." Unconscious
of what theory they were letting loose, and be-
lieving that they were appealing only to a phantom,
they invoked opinion and popular will to lower and
depreciate the public power which separated them
from domination. It is true that, after having
fixed the universal will, heneplac'ita mitlt'dudinis, as
the basis of monai'chy, these great democrats of 1600
find no difficulty in reducing to nothing the autho-
rity of universal suffrage ; so that, upsetting roy-
alty thi'ough the people, and the people through
the ecclesiastical authority, nothing remains at last
but to concede every thing to their principle.
Thus, when all the parts wei'e changed, and
the writers of the order had prematurely made
use of sovereignty to abolish sovereignty, what
place of refuge do you think remained to those
who wished to protect the civil and political law
against theocracy ? The school of the Society of
Jesus threatened to kill liberty by liberty, even be-
fore it was born. To escape from this extraordinary
trap, Sarpi and the Independents were compelled
to advance the doctrine that political (lower, royal
power existed by divine right; and that thus the
state had a reason for its existence, as well as the
papacy ; that it could not be put down by it, since it
possessed, like it, an indisputable foundation : that
is to say, that by a disregard of all truth, a,nd by a
stratagem which threatened to destroy at its birth
the idea of civil and political existence, the order
appealed to the sovereignty of the people only
for the purpose of destroying it, and the Politi-
cians were constrained to appeal to divine right
only for the purpose of saving it.
The question thus laid down, there remained
only one decisive step for the theocratical party to
take, and this was to push things as far even as
the avowal of the docti-ine of regicide ; they did not
shrink even from this necessity. No doubt, in the
midst of the madness of the League, preachers of
various orders were not wanting to welcome the
doctrine. But what no one denies, is, that it
was the Society of Jesus that first learnedly advo-
cated it, and erected it into a theory. Their popu-
lar axiom of those times is well known ; " A pawn
only is required to check-mate a king !"
From 1590 to lf;20 the most important doctors
of the order, withdrawn from the struggle and
peacefully shut up within the precincts of their
convents, the Emanuel S.as, the Alphonso Salme-
rons, the Gregories of Valencia, the Anthony San-
tarems, positively establish the right of political
assassination. Here, in two words, is the whole
theory, which, during this period, was very uniform.
Either the tyrant possesses the state by legitimate
right, or he has usurped it. In the first case, he
may be stripped of his power by a ]uiblic judgment,
after which every man becomes executioner at will ;
or else the tyrant is illegitimate, and then every
man in the country can put him to death. Unus-
qiiisque de popnlo potest occidere, says Emanuel
Sa in 1590 ; "It is allowable for every man to
kill a tyrant, who is so substantially," says a Ger-
man Jesuit, Adam Tanner, tyrannus quoad sub-
stantiam ; "It is honourable to exterminate him,"
extenninare gloriosum est, observes another no less
authoritative author: — Alphonso Salmeron in-
vests the pope with the right of putting to death
by a single word, provided he does not assist with
his own hand, potest tcrho corporalem ritam auferre ;
for in receiving the right of pasturing the sheep,
has he not also received the right of destroying the
wolves ? potestatem Ivpos interjiciendi 1 According
to the theory of Bellarmin, the most wise, the most
learned, the most moderate of all, at least in forms,
it was not for monks, nor ecclesiastics, to commit
massacres, ccedes facere, nor to kill the king by
stratagem ; the custom* is first to admonish them
in a fatherly manner, jMterne corripere ; then to ex-
communicate them ; then to deprive tiiem of royal
power ; after which their execution belongs to
others. Execiitio ad, alios pertinet.
There exists a celebrated work wherein these
theories are expounded with an audacity which
cannot fail to excite great astonishment, when
we reflect for what readers it was intended. I
speak of the Kivg^s Book, by Mariana. This work
was written imder the inspection of Philip II.,
for the instruction of his sons. Every where else
Jesuitism takes secret paths ; here it rises up
with all the pride of a Spanish hidalgo. Since it
feels that Spanish royalty is entwined in the meshes
of theocracy, and as it speaks in the name of papa
Rome, it feels itself permitted to say any thing
Hence the strange freedom with which the civil au-
thority is spurned, even if it make the slightest at-
tempt to escape from a dependence to which it has
given its assent !
In spite of the difference of character, the ¥mg
of Mariana may be compaied to the Machiavellian
prince. Machiavel employs all vices, provided they
are of a stern nature ; he wishes to use them in fa-
vour of the independence of the state : Mai'iana
* Ipsorum mos est.
THEIR PLEA FOR REGICIDE.
47
acknowledges every virtue, provided he can turn
it to the destruction of the state and the advance-
ment of the clergy. Will you believe, that in the name
of these very virtues, he seeks to exact impunity
for every crime which ecclesiastics may connnit ?
And this is not a piece of advice, but a command.
" Let no one belonging to the clergy be condemned*,
even if he shall have deserved to be so." It is
better that their crimes should go unpunished, j^'ce-
stat scelera impunita reliiiqui ; this impunity being
establisiied, he concludes by requiring that the
heads of the clergy should be, not only the heads
of the church, but also of the state; and that civil,
as well as religious matters, should be abandoned
to their control. I confess, I like to discover in
Mariana's Jesuitism, Castilian pride, — If not, not;
who would have expected to find the formula of
the frankness of the ancient /«eros transported into
the diplomacy of Loyola ?
And after all these hard conditions which the
theocratic spirit imposes on this ideal royalty, what
sort of guarantee will it bestow ? The guarantee
of the dagger. After Mariana has bound royalty
by theocratic power, he hangs over its brow the
threat of assassination, and establishes thus, at the
foot of the Papacy, an absolute monarchy, governed
by the right of the dagger. Behold, how in the
midst of the theory, lie interrupts himself, in order
to flash before the eyes of his royal pupil the still
bloody knife of Jacques Clement. " Lately," he
says, " a magnificent and memorable exploit f has
been accomplished in France, for the instruction of
impious princes. Clement, in killing the king, has
created for himself a great name, ingens sibi nomen
fecit. He perished (Clement), the everlasting glory
of France (ceternum Gallice decus), according to the
opinion of most persons — a young man of a simple
mind and delicate frame, but a superior power
nerved his arm and his soul J."
This example thus sanctified, in his turn he
founds his doctrine of regicide with the firmness of
aMachiavel. In ordinary cases, an assembly ought
to be called in order to carry a decision ; in the
absence of that assenAly, the public voice of the
people, publica xox popuii, or the advice of grave
and erudite men§, ought to suffice. Above all, let
it not be feared " that too many persons will abuse
this privilege of wielding iron. Human affairs
would proceed much better, if many strong-nerved
men were found, /orti jocciore, who held their own
safety lightly ; the greater part will be withheld by
their love for life."
In the path which Mariana followed with so
much confidence, a scruple suddenly arrasted him;
What was it ? He doubted whether it is permitted
to use poison as well as steel. Here the casuisti-
cal distinctions from which, up to this moment,
he had freed himself, re-appear. He will not use
poison, from this purely Christian motive, that the
prince, in drinking the medicament || prepared for
him, would unwittingly commit a half-suicide, a
thing opposed to evangelical law. Nevertheless,
since fraud and cunning are lawful, he discovers
this loop-hole ; that poisoning is permitted, so
* Neminem ex sacrato ordine supplicio quamvis merito
subjiciat. — De Rege, lib. i. cap. x. p. 88.
t Facinus niemorabile, iiobile, iiisigne.— TA. 1. i.e. vi.
. X Sed major vis vires et animum confirmabat. — lb. p. 54.
§ Viri eruditi et praves — //;. c. vi. p. 60.
II Noxium niiidicamentum. — lb. 1. i. c. vii. p. G7.
long as the prince does not poison himself ; for
instance, if a venom is made use of, subtle enough
to kill, even by impregnating the sub.stance of which
the royal vesture is composed, iiiiiiinnii cum tanta
t'is est renenl, ut sella eo aut teste dellbula vim inter-
ficiendi habeat.
Now, recollect, that this book is no ordinary
book; that it is written for the education of the
future king of Spain ! What depth, and what
audacity ! In the very court, under the pure gold
of the Gospel, and the morality of Xenophon, to
cause the point of the dagger to be felt by antici-
pation on tlie breast of the royal disciple; to pre-
sent the threat at the same time as the instruction;
to suspend the arm of the society over the child
that is to reign; to attach the dagger of Jacques
Clement to his crown ! What a masterstroke, on
the part of the Society of Jesus ! What intrepid
pride on the part of the teacher ! And, for the
pupil, what a warning, wliat sudden fear, what
unappeasable terror ! Do not be surprised if this
youthful Philip III. lives as though his blood were
stagnated in his veins; if he retires as much as pos-
sible from royalty; if he does not quit the solitude
of the Escurial except to imitate the pilgrimage
of Loyola. Since that day, half in terror, half in
respect, the Spanish dynasty of the house of Aus-
tria vanished beneath that cold hand always raised
against it. It resembles that of the commandant
in 1)011 Juan. King or people, it drngs away past
return whoever hcild out their hands to it.
A young dauphin of Spain may well be excused
for turning pale, when a man accustomed like
Philip II. to every conspiracy, said, "The only
Order of which I understand nothing, is the Order
of the Jesuits." Would you like to liave an opinion
of them from a man pre-eminently courageous, to
whom they had taught fear ? Tiiere is the answer
of Henry IV. to Sully, who was opposed to the
recal of the Jesuits : the king confesses that he
only throws open France to them because he is
afraid of them. " Of necessit}', I am compelled of
two tilings to do one ; viz. to barely and simply
admit the Jesuits, to relieve them from the defa-
mation and opprobrium by which they have been
overwhelmed, and to put to the proof their fine
oaths and excellent promises ; or to reject them
more decidedly than ever, and to persecute them
with all the rigour and hardships jiossible to con-
ceive, in order that they may never approach either
me or my states ; in which case, there cannot be a
doubt that they would be thrown into the deepest
despaii', and consequently into designs upon my
life, which would render me miserable and wretched,
living ever in the fear of poisoning or assassination*;
for these people have agents and correspondents
everywhere, and the greatest dexterity in twisting
minds as they please ; I would rather be dead at
once ; agreeing on this point with Ctesar, that the
sweetest death is that which is the least foreseen
or expected f ." •
This avowed regicidal doctrine endured but for
a time. It belonged to the period of enthusiasm
which marked the first phases of the Order of
* In spite of these terrible words, will it be believed that
our adversaries adduce the sympathies of Henry IV., in
their own favour ? According to them, these words are only
an additional grace in the Bearnois. At this rate, if we are
not their friends, we are evidently their partisans.
t Memoires de Sully, t. v. p. 113.
Jesus. In 1G14, tlie times having changed, the
right of the poignard is replaced by a more pro-
found institution, which, without kiUing the man,
annihilates the king only. The confessor succeeds
the regicide. Jacques Clement, Jean Chatel, De
Barriere, no longer exist; but in their stead is seen
something infinitely more terrible. Behind every
king a-member of the Society of Jesus treads, who,
night and day, with the authority of infernal
menaces, holds this soul in his hand, shatters it in
spiritual exercises, brings it down to the level of
the company; it renounces the creation of ministers,
in order to set itself upon the throne beside the
penitent. Royalty is not shattered at the foot
of theocracy, but still more has been done ;
an intruding head has glided into the crown
through the confessional, and the work is accom-
plished. For the business was not to pour into
the ears of kings the living truth, but rather to
disarm their conscience by filling it with a number
of hatreds and interested rivalries ; and nothing
is so surprising as to see, in the midst of the life
which springs up in modern society, so many
princes, so many sovereigns, mechanically moved
by that will wliich they borrow every day from
those who profess to destroy the will.
Whenever a dynasty falls to decay, I perceive
rising from the eartli, and taking its stand like
an evil genius behind, the figure of one of those
solemn Jesuit confessors, who softly and paternally
draws it towards death ; Father Nithard behind
the last inheritor of the Austrian dynasty in
Spain, Father Auger behind the last of the Valois,
Father Peters behind the last of the Stuarts ; not
to mention the times which you have witnessed,
and wliich border on our own. Call to mind, how-
ever, the figure of Father Le Tellier in the
Memoirs of St. Simon. He is the only one
whom that fearless writer has pourtrayed with
a shudder. What a lugubrious air, what a pre-
sentiment of death overspread all that society !
I know, in fact, of nothing more terrible than the
exchange made between those two men, Louis XIV.
and Father Le Teliiei-, the king who every day gives
up a portion of his moral life, and Father Le Tellier
who infuses every day a portion of his leaven ;
that imposing wreck of a noble mind which no
longer attempts a defence, that sustained intriguing
ardour, which grasps every concession made by con-
science ; that rivalry between gi-eatness and little-
ness, that triumph of littleness; and, finally, the
soul of Father Le Tellier, which seems entirely to
occupy the place of the soul of Louis XIV., and
grasp the conscience of the kingdom ; and in this
inconceivable exchange, in which all is taken from
one, and nothing given to the other, France,
which no longer recognizes its aged king, and
who, by his death, feels itself delivered at once
from the double burden of the egotism of absolute
power and the egotism of a political religion.
What a u-nrning ! In spite of the difference be-
tween that time and ours, how necessary it is never
to forget it ! {Applause.)
Here we arrive at a decisive revolution in the
political theories of Jesuitism. Never was there
so prompt a change, or so auilacious a manoeuvre.
We are entering on the eighteenth century ; the
doctrines which Jesuitism iiad sustained from its
birth, cease to be a i)h;intom; they assume a body,
a reality in men's minds. Government of opinion.
sovereignty of the people, freedom of popular
election, right founded on the social contract, libertyj
independence — all these things cease to be mere
words ; they circulate, they stir, they are developed
during the whole century. In one word, they are no
longer the theses of a college; they are realities.
In the presence of the doctrines by which they
began, what are those intrepid republicans of the
Order of Jesus about to do I To deny, to crush
them, if they can. With that powerful instinct
which they possess of arresting life in its very germ,
they turn round and precipitate themselves against
their own doctrines, as soon as these begin to
exhibit life. Is not this the part they have played
for a centurj' and a half ? Is there one of them,
who, during all that interval, has not applied
himself to destroy that force of opinion which the
founders had put forth without knowing that the
word would grow, and that the programme of the
League would become a truth ?
In the sixteenth century, who proclaims, even
with the good will of Philip II., the doctrine
of the sovei'eignty of the people, when it has no
chance of being carried into effect ? The Society
of Jesus. In the eighteenth, who incessantly
attacks the sovereignty of the people, when, ceasing
to be an abstraction, it becomes an institution 2
The Society of Jesus. Who, in the eighteenth
century, are the most abusive enemies of phi-
losophy ? Those who in the sixteenth laid down
the same principles without desiring to make any
other use of them than as a weapon of attack.
Who are those who, in the eighteenth century, en-
deavour to strengthen with their doctrines the abso-
lute and schismatic power of Catherine II. and of
Frederick II.? Those who in the sixteenth, talked
of nothing but overthrowing, of trampling under
foot, of stabbing, in the name of the people, all
absolute and schismatic powers : for we must not
forget that when the Society of Jesus was abolished
by the pope, it found a refuge against supreme
authority in the bosom of the despotism of Cathe-
rine II. For a moment a str.ange league was
observed, that of despotism, of atheism, of Jesuit-
ism, against all the living power of opinion. From
1773 to 1814, in that interval when the Order
of Jesus was by the Papacy supposed to be dead,
it determined to live in spite of it, retired, so to
speak, within the heart of the atheism of the
Russian court ; there it was found entire, the
moment it was wanted.
If these are not sufficient contradictions, let us
examine the documents which in our own days are
the most imbued with its spirit. No one of our
time has reproduced the new political maxims of
the theocratic school with more authority than MM.
De Bonald and De Maistre. Ask them what they
think of election, of opinion, of the sovereignty of
the people. That sovereignty, answers in the name
of them all, their orator, M. De Maisti'e, is an
anti-christian dogma ; so much for orthodoxy.
But to condemn what was once sanctified is not
sufficient ; it must also be buffeted with that affec-
tation of insolence, peculiar to fallen aristocracies,
when they have no longer any other wea]]ons.
Hence that sovei'eignty, so vaunted by the Bellar-
mins, the Marianas, the Emanuel Sas, is no longer
for M. De Maistre, anything but apliUosophkal cant*;
to derive it from tlw people, is to render it odious and
* M. De Maisire, Le Pape, p. 152.
DESTRUCTION, THE FUNCTION OF JESUITISM.
49
ridiculous *. Are these desertions enough ? Arrived
at this point, the evolution is completed. The
weapon sliarpened against monarchical institutions
has been turned against popular institutions ; and
if, from all that goes before, anything evidently re-
sults, it is that after having desired in the sixteenth
century to destroy royalty by the authority of the
people, in the nineteenth an attempt has been made
to ruin the people by the authority of kings. It is no
longer the prince who is to be stabbed — What is it
then ? Public Opinion.
Thus the function of Jesuitism, in its relation with
politics, has been to shatter, one through the other,
monarchy by democracy, and so on reciprocally,
until all these forms, being worn out or depreciated,
nothing remains but to commit ourselves to the
Constitution and the ideas inherent in the society
of Loyola ; and I cannot conceal my surpi-ise
that any persons of our own day allow them-
selves to be blinded by this semblance of democracy,
without perceiving that the pretended demaijofiy
of the League concealed nothing but a huge pitfall
to entrap at once royalty and the nation. When
Mariana and the doctors of that school have ar-
gued sufficiently to support royalty by democracy,
they add, without being in the least disconcerted,
these few words which overthrow the whole scaf-
folding : Democracy is a perversion ; democratio quw
perrersio est.
What then did the members of the Society of
Jesus desire to attain by so many stratagems, and
so much labour ? What do they still desire ?
To destroy for destruction's sake ? By no means.
They desire, as is natural to every society, to every
man, to realize the ideal which they have written
in their law, to approach it by secret ways, if they
cannot attain it openly. It is the condition of their
nature, which they cannot renounce without ceas-
ing to exist. The whole question is reduced into
the discovery of what social form is necessarily de-
rived from the spirit of the Society of Jesus. But
to discover this plan, it is sufficient to open our
eyes, since, with the audacity which they ally to
stratagem, their great writers have accurately de-
fined it — That ideal is theocracy.
Open the works of their theorist, of him who has
so long protected them by his pleading, of that man
who gives so soft and so moderate an expression to
ideas so violent, of their doctor, their apostle, the
sage Bellarmin. He does not conceal it; his for-
mula of government is the submission of political
power to ecclesiastical power. The privilege of
escaping even in civil matters from the jm-isdiction
of the state f is reserved for the clergy. Political
power is to be subordinate to religious authority,
which can depose it, revoke it, enclose it, like a
ram separated from tJie flock : it is again the privilege
of the clergy to escape, even in temporal affairs,
from common law, by the divine law; in one word,
his theory is the unity of the State and the Church,
on the condition that the one shall be subject to the
other, as the body is to the soul, — a monarchy, a
democracy, an aristocracy, no matter what, with the
veto of the pope ; that is to say, a decapitated state ;
such is the charter of the order drawn up by the
pen of the wise Bellarmin.
* M. De Maistre, Le Pape, p. 159.
t Clericos a jurisdictione seculari exemplos non tantum in
spiritualibus, sed etiam in temporalibus. — De Potest. Summ.
Pontif. c. 34, p. 273, 281, 283, &c.
Who would have expected to meet, word for
word, in the sixteenth century, as a contract of alli-
ance, the Ultra-montanism of Gregory VII. ? We
are touching burning coals; that which is most
cherished, most imperishable in the spirit of the
founders of the order. Not satisfied with repro-
ducing, in the very bosom of the Reformation, the
religious dogma of the middle age, they strove
at the same time to reproduce its political dogma.
In their anxiety to grasp every thing, they wished
to restore to Papacy the ambition that she had her-
self laid aside; as though that sovereign power,
which raises and deposes governments by a sort of
social miracle, could be recomposed painfully by
science, controversy, and effort ! This power ap-
pears in action, but as soon as it is required to prove
its right, it ceases to be. I know not that Gregory
VII. made long treatises, to show the power he
possessed of fulminating ; but he did fulminate, by
a letter, a word, a sign : kings bowed the head, the
doctors were silent.
But to imagine that in order to ascend to this
Sinai of the middle age, to collect the rays of light
which proceeded from the brow of Hildebrand, and
reached directly to the heart of the prostrated na-
tions— to imagine that to bring about such miracles,
all that was necessary was to heap reasoning upon
reasoning, authority upon authority, wile upon wile;
this is to take once again the letter for the life. The
Society of Loyola assisted in maintaining Papacy on
the throne of the middle age ; and because its out-
ward appearance remains the same, it cannot con-
ceive how Papacy no longer exerts the autho-
rity which it possessed in the middle age : the
Society of Jesus has restored to Papacy its ma-
terial thundere, and it is astonished that Papacy
does not terrify the world therewith, forgetting that
in order to launch thundei's against minds you must
begin by awaking them.
This is the real misfortune of the order in its
political system. Deceived by the material visions
of Hildebrand, it pursues an impossible ideal.
It agitates eternally, without coming to any result,
and nevertheless is really unhappy, believe me,
in spite of its pretended conquests; for it is fretting
itself — for what ? In order to inspire Papacy with
a passion for authority, which that Papacy cannot,
will not any longer conceive. It stirs, it wears
itself out, and why ? In order to regain a shred
of that phantom of Gregory VII., which each cen-
tury, each year, escapes more and more, and buries
itself still further in the impenetrable past.
Indisputably, the union of the churcli and the
state, of the spiritual and temporal, is a lofty idea.
I will readily admit that the separation of one from
the other is in itself a misfortune ; but as it has
happened in the sight of the whole world, and as
we have not been able to hinder it, the greatest
misfortune would be to deny it. When all the na-
tions of the Christian family acknowledged in the
middle age the authority of the same leader, the in-
terference of the supreme authority in public affairs
might have been a laudable undertaking. The
dependence of European nations, under the same
spiritual power, only established their reciprocal
equaUty. Now, that half of them, by throwing off
this yoke, have given themselves full swing, is it
not evident what would be the situation of those
who should accept it once more as it was in the
past ?
E
50
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
After the rupture of the sixteenth century, 1
defy any one to show me one nation in which the
interference, even indirectly, of spiritual authority
witli temporal affairs, that is to say, Ultra-montan-
ism, has not been a cause of ruin ! Since wlien
has France been all that she could become ? Since
Louis XIV., and the declaration of 1682, which
distinctly proclaimed the independence of tlie state.
On the other hand, what have you done with those
nations who have remained the most faithful to
your doctrines ? What have you done with Italy ?
In the name of unity, you have divided it into
fragments, and she cannot reunite herself. What
have you done with Spain, Portugal, and South
America ? These nations have followed the im-
pulse of theocracy ; how have they been re-
warded ? By every appearance of death. What
have you done with Poland ? She, too, remained
faithful. You have delivered her into the arms of
schism.
Elsewhere, those nations which now are power-
ful, which posi?ess at least all the signs of pros-
perity, those which aim at grand undertakings,
those' that are awake, that are expanding,— Eng-
land, Russia, the United States,— are they Ultra-
montanists ? According to you, scarcely are they
Christian.
Whence comes so strange a reversal ? Why
does submission to spiritual authority every where
bring along with it decay and ruin l Why have
the nations who have followed that direction fallen
into a state of irremediable stagnation ? Is it not
the very nature of the spirit to vivify instead of
stagnating ? Assuredly. Ought not the soul to
command the body ? Yes ; doubtless. The doc-
trine of Ultra-montanism is, then, philosophically,
theoretically, true ? I consider it as correct. What
is wanting in it then, that Providence refutes it in
so striking a manner ? Only one condition : for
instance, if the order of things were reversed ; if
the spirit ceased to think, and abandoned its task
to the body ; if the letter were preserved, without
preserving the reality ; if the spiritual had al-
lowed itself to be disj)ossessed of the spirit ; if by
a tremendous reversal of the order of things, there
had for three centuries been more martyrs in
political revolutions, than in ecclesiastical quarrels;
more enthusiasm in the laity than in the clergy ;
more ardour in philosophy than in controversy ;
in one word, more soul in temporal than in
spiritual matters ; — it would result therefrom that
one would have preserved the letter, while the
other conquered the thing ; but to take the lead
of the world, it is not sufficient to say with the
lips, " Lord, Lord ;" to preserve power, these
words should comprehend reality, inspiration, and
life.
LECTURE THE SIXTH*.
PHILOSOPHY OF JESUITISM.— CONCLUSION,
We have now seen the Society of Jesus alternately
struggling with the individual in the Spiritual Ex-
ercises of Loyola, with the political world in Ultra-
montanism, with foreign religions in their missions.
To complete our examination of their doctrines,
there remains to see them warring upon the
human mind in philosophy, science, and theology.
It was little to expedite to the ends of the world
hardy messengers, to surprise a few hordes by
means of a Gospel in disguise, to ruin monarchy by
the people, and the people by monarchy ; all these
half-executed projects, which look so ambitious,
wax pale before their resolve to remodel, from the
foundation upwards, the education of all mankind.
The founders of the order were thoroughly cog-
nizant of the instincts of their age. They were
born in the midst of an excitement of innovation
which dazzled every mind ; an overflowing spirit
of creation and of discovery was sweeping and
hurrying on the whole world. In this general
intoxication, as it were, of science, poetry, philo-
sophy, men felt themselves precipitated towards
an uidvnown future. How stay, suspend, freeze
human thought in the midst of this mighty rush ?
There was but one means, and this the heads of
the Order of Jesus attempted. It was, to make
themselves the representatives of this onward
tendency; to fall in with it, the better to stay it;
to erect over the whole earth scientific establish-
ments to fetter the wings of science ; to allow the
spirit au apparent movement, which should render
* Delivered June 14th, 1843.
all movement impossible ; to waste it in incessant
gymnastics ; and, under false appearances of ac-
tivity, to flatter curiosity, nip the genius of dis-
covery in the bud, overlay knowledge with the
dust of books ; in a word, to make the restless
mind of the sixteenth century turn in a sort of
Ixion's wheel. Such was, from its outset, that
great plan of education, followed up with so much
prudence and such consummate art. Never was
so much reason brought to bear in conspiracy
against reason.
The Society of Jesus has been accused of per-
secuting Galileo. They did better than that, for
they laboured with incomparable skill to render
the appearance of another Galileo in all forth-
coming time impossible, and to root the mania
for discovery out of the mind of man. There
stood before them that everlasting problem — the
alliance between belief and knowledge, between
religion and philosophy. If, like the mystics of
the middle age, they had been contented with de-
basing the one and exalting the other, no doubt
the age would have hearkened unto them. To do
them justice, they sought, at least, to leave the
two terms subsistent. But how did they resolve
the problem of the alliance ? By allowing reason
to shine nominally ; by granting it all the chances
vanity can desire, all the externals of power, on
the single condition of refusing it the use.
Hence, wheresoever the society establish them-
selves, whether in the midst of cities, or of the vast
deserts of India or of America, they build, face to
PHILOSOPHY OF THE JESUITS.
51
face, a church and a college : one house for belief,
one house for knowledge. Is this not a proof of
sovereign impartiality ? Whatever recals, or sa-
tisfies the pride of human intellect, manuscripts,
libraries, physical and astronomical instruments,
all are collected, even in the depth of deserts ; so
as to tempt one to think here is a temple dedicated
to human reason. Let us not, however, suffer our-
selves to stop at those outward shows, but let us
sound the very depths of the system, and consult
the spirit which gives the clue to the whole esta-
blishment. The society, in rules destined to se-
cresy, have themselves drawn up the constitution
of knowledge under the title of Ratio Studiorum.
One of the first injunctions which meets my eye is
the following : — " No one, even in matters which
cannot prejudice piety, to lay down a new ques-
tion"— Nemo novas introducat qutEstiones. What!
when there is no danger to persons, to things, or
even to ideas, to imprison oneself, from the begin-
ning, in a cii'cle of problems ; never to look beyond ;
not to deduce from a conquered truth a new truth.
Is not this burying the talent of the Gospel ? No
matter. The terms are explicit ; the threat which
aecompanios them admits of no circumlocution —
" Such as are of too liberal a cast of mind must be
dismissed from teaching *." But, if it is forbidden
to arouse the mind by new truths, surely all will
be at liberty to debate questions already laid dovvn,
especially if they be as old as the world. No j this
is not allowed. Let us explain.
I see long ordinances touching philosophy. I
am curious to know what the philosophy of Jesuit-
ism may be. I set about studying that portion of
those ordinances which sums up the leading idea of
all the rest ; and what do I discover ? A striking
confirmation of every word I have advanced on the
subject. Under the head of philosophy, one would
expect to meet with the serious and vital questions
of destiny, or, at least, with that sort of liberty
which the middle age knew how to reconcile with
the subtlety of scholasticism. You ai'e mistaken.
That which constitutes the chief feature of the pro-
gramme is the subject that cannot be introduced
into it; the skilful discarding of all great questions,
so as to admit only the petty ones. You might
guess for ever, and not hit upon the question first
forbidden to be discussed in the philosophy of Je-
suitism. It is prescribed that you are to think as
little as possible of God, and never to speak of
Him : — Qaa'st'tones de Deo prcetereanturf ! "The
pupil is not to be detained with the consideration of
Beini; more than three or four days J" (and the
course of philosophy is to last three years). As
to the study of Substance, it must be altogether
shunned {nihil dicant, " the teacher must not
touch on it") ! Above all, the discussion of princi-
ples is to be excluded §. And, most especially, the
teacher must abstain {midto magis ahstinendum) from
referring to the first cause, or to free-will, or to
the eternal nature of God. " Let them say nothinfi,
let them do nothing \\ " are sacramental words of
* Hi a docendi munere sine dubio.removendi. — Rat. St.
p. 172.
t " Pass over all questions . . . relative to God."
X Adeo ut tridui vel quatridui circiter spatium non exce-
dant.— Ka*. St. p. 227.
§ Caveat ne ingrediatur disputationem . . . de principiis.
—lb. p. 227.
II Nihil dicant, nihil agant !
constant recurrence, which constitute the whole
spirit of this code of philosophy. Let them go on
without inquiry {non e.vaminando) is the fundamen-
tal principle of its theory.
And so, once again, but more strikingly than on any
other subject, the show instead of reality, the mask
instead of the person. Fancy for a moment what
must have been this pretended science of the niiud,
decapitated, void of the idea of cause, of substance,
and even of God ; in other words, denuded of all
that constitutes its greatness ! They betrayed their
own opinion of it by this singular clause in their
rules — " Whosoever is unapt at philosophy, maybe
turned over to the study of cases of conscience * ;"
though, to speak the truth, I am uncertain whether
most contempt lurks in these words for philoso-
phy, or for theological morality.
Yet, mai'k their consistency with themselves.
From the commencement they were mistrustful of
the spirit, of enthusiasm, of the soul ; whence they
were led to mistrust the principle, and the source
of these three, that is, the idea of God. In the
fear they ever entertained of real greatness, they
could not fail to create an atheistical knowledge, an
atheistical metaphysics, which, without a breath of
life, possessed, nevertheless, all its outward signs.
And hence, after the end and aim of knowledge have
been lopped away, that pompous display of discus-
sions, theses, of intellectual struggles, of word-com-
bats, which characterize the education given by the
Order of Jesus. The more they stripped reflection
of its gravest topics, the more they allured to those
intellectual exercises and tricks of fence which
marked the nothingness of the discussion ; so that
they abounded in spectacles, solemnities f, academic
tourneys, spiritual duels. It is hard to suppose
that mind had no share in so many litei'ary occupa-
tions, artificial I'ivalries, exchanges of written
thought. Here was the miracle of the teaching of
the Society of Jesus — to attach man to immense
labour, which could produce nothing; to amuse him
by smoke, to lure him from the path of glory, to
render him immoveable at the vei'y moment in
which he was beguiled by all the appearances of
literary and philosophical progress. If the Satanic
genius of inertia had been bodily manifest on earth,
this is the course it would have pursued.
Apply this method, for a moment, to any given
people, among whom it may come to prevail — to
Italy, to Spain, and weigh the result. Those na-
tions, still animated by the daring of the sixteenth
century, would infallibly have rejected death pre-"
sented under its natural features. But how recog-
nize death presenting itself in the shape of discus-
sions, examination, subject of curiosity ? And so,
in a few years, in those cities renowned for art,
poetiy, policy — Florence, Ferrara, Seville, Sala-
manca, Venice, — new generations believe them-
selves to be walking in the living footsteps of their
ancestors, because, in the hands of the Jesuits, they
restlessly stir more, and intrigue in vacuo. If me-
taphysics be without God, it follows that art must
be without inspiration, and is reduced to an ex-
ercise J, a play of the fancy §. They imagine them-
selves still to be of kindred to the poets, and to
• Inepti ad philosophiam ad casuum studia destinentur.
—Rat. St. p. 172.
t Soleniniorem disputationem.
J Exercitatio. V. Imago prirai saeculi, p. 444, 4G0.
§ Ludus poeticus. V. ib., p. 157, 444, 447, 706. ;
52
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
continue the lineage, if they expound Ezekiel in
company with Catullus, and the Spiritttal Exercises of
Loyola side by side with Theocritus; and when they
compose for spiritual meditation in the house of
trial eclogues imitated word for word from Virgil's
Thyrsis, from his Alexis and Corydon, sitting alone
on the sea-shore : and these monstrous works, from
whose insipidity * thei*e is exhaled an odour as of a
whitened sepulchre, but audaciously presented as a
model of new art by the Society of Jesus, are pre-
cisely those that serve most to expose it.
They have believed that as art is only fiction,
they could do as they pleased with her. But art
has disconcerted all their calculations ; and, having
continued on the false principle on which they be-
gan, they have culminated to an extreme of ridi-
culousness and bad taste, such as all others may
despair of attaining. Christianity begins her poetry
by the hymn Te Deum ; Jesuitism begins by the
official eclogue of St. Ignatius, and of father Le
Fevre, concealed under the persons of Daphnis and of
Lycidas — S. Ignatius et primus ejus socius Petrus
Faber, sub persona Daphnidis et Lycidas. Now, this
is not the poem of an individual ; it is the repre-
sentative of a class of poetry peculiar to the so-
ciety, which they themselves put forward as a
novelty, in their collective works. Here, I cannot re-
fi'ain from remarking, that Jesuitism has evinced its
ability in all other matters, and assumed all other
masks; but the instant it endeavoured to appropriate
poetry, that daughter of inspiration and of truth
turned upon it, and, by surpassing ridicule, avenged
philosophy, morality, religion, and good sense at
one and the same time.
One step more, to come to our journey's end.
From philosophy, let us for a moment elevate our-
selves to theology; that is, to the relations of Jesu-
itism with the Christian world in the sixteenth
century. The predominant question in the reli-
gious revolution, was a question of liberty. The
Church was divided. What course will Jesuitism
pui'sue between the Reformation and the Papacy ?
On this single point hangs its whole existence ;
and here it has far surpassed Machiavel in policy.
The fundamental, throughout the whole of this
century, is for each communion to pronounce for
or against free-will. And for which, think you,
will tliese men decide, who, in their inmost heart,
have sworn to the bondage of the human mind ?
Unhesitatingly, openly, and officially, they preach
liberty, and sci-een and aiTay themselves under her
banners. It cannot be too often repeated, that, in
this struggle of the sixteenth century, they are the
champions of free-will, the advocates of metaphy-
sical independence. So readily, too, do they push
this doctrine into exaggeration, that the religious
orders which preserve the lively tradition of Catho-
licism, and esiiecially the Dominicans, are scan-
dalized. The Inquisition threatens them ; the
Popes themselves, unable to penetrate such depth
of purpose, are on the point of condemning, but,
whether through alarm or instinct, refrain, and
allow matters to go on until the result gives the
• In one of these poem?, of double meaning, St. Ignatius,
being struck l>ii a stone, there flasties forlli from within him,
the fire of divine /ore— " Percussus concipit ignes." lb. p.
7H. This solemn collection of characters and riddles, is en-
titled, The Christian Parnassus, raised under tlie auspices of
St. Ignatius — Sti Ignatii auspicio adsurgens, p. 450.
clue to a manoeuvre, such as neither Papacy, nor
Inquisition, nor the ancient ordei's, had ever been
able to conceive.
And mark the advantage of the light Jesuitism
had struck out, both upon the Reformation and the
Papacy. By pushing the doctrine of free-will to
its utmost consequences, it fell in with the inde-
pendent instincts of the modern age ; and, how
forcible the appeal to the Protestants, when it in-
vited them to inward independence, and to break
the yoke of predestination and of fatalism ! This
was an all-powerful argument to use against the
Protestants of France and Germany, who felt
themselves held back by the very instinct which
had impelled them to separation. Luther and
Calvin had denied free-will. The disciples of
Loyola, forcing their way thi'ough this breach,
seized upon and recovered modern man by that
very sentiment which circumstances have most
developed within him. Confess that it was a mas-
ter-stroke, to enslave the human mind in the name
of liberty.
In all this, the religious policy of Jesuitism
quadrates exactly with that of the first Roman
emperors. Just as Augustus and Tiberius erected
themselves into the representatives of all the an-
cient rights of the Republic, in oi'der to crush
them all, so did the Jesuits stand forth the repre-
sentatives of the innate and metaphysical I'ights of
the human mind, in order to reduce it to the most
absolute bondage ever witnessed. Indeed, they
have, as much as possible, realized the wish of the
emperor, who longed for all mankind to have but
one head ; the difference being, that instead of
striking it off, they have enslaved it.
Now, what will they do with this soul which they
have just restored to its native independence —
restore it to the Church ? Undoubtedly. But to
which ; to the democratic Church of tlie early
ages, or to the Church founded by the solemn
representations of Councils, or to the Church, the
Reformation of which was demanded by the whole
fifteenth century ? All depends, to arrive at a
conclusion, on knowing the form which Jesuitism
desires to predominate in the constitution of Catho-
licism. In the sixteenth century, there were
three tendencies in Europe, and three modes of
terminating the debate — to give the predominance
to the Councils (which was to develop the demo-
cratic element), or, to the Papacy (which was to
promote autocracy), or, finally, to limit one by the
other, as had been done before. With these ques-
tions before them, what was the decision of these
great champions of the innate right of human
liberty * /"
Their doctrine, both in the Council of Trent and
on all occasions, went to extirpate every element of
liberty out of the Church ; to humble to the dust
the councils, those great representative assemblies
of Christendom ; to sap by the foundations the
rights of the bishops, anciently elected by the
people, and to leave nothing theologically subsis-
tent but the pope ; that is, to borrow the ex-
pressions of an illustrious French prelate of the
sixteenth century, to found, not a monarchy, but,
at one and the same time, a temporal and a spiri-
tual tyranny. Do you detect, now, that long and
wily course which startled even the Inquisition
• Jure innatse libertatis humanae. Molin. Comment,
p. 761.
REPEATED EXPULSIONS OF THE JESUITS.
53
herself 1 They seize modem man in the name of
liberty, and they at once plunge him, in the name
of divine right, into irremediable bondage ; for,
says their orator, their general, Laynez, the Church
is born in bondage, and devoid of all liberti/ and all
jurisdiction. The pope alone is everything ; the
rest is only a shadow.
Thus, you see, one dash of the pen effaces that
tradition of divine life which circulated througliout
the body, that transmission of the right of the com-
pany of the Apostles unto the whole Christian com-
munity. Instead of that Gallican Church, which
was linked unto others by one same community of
sanctity, power, and liberty ; instead of that vast
foundation by which the nations were linked unto
God in one sublime organization ; instead of those
provincial, national, general assemblies, which
communicated of their own life to the head, and,
reciprocally, drew from him part of their own life,
what is there left in theory even in the Catholicism
of the Society of Jesus ? An old man raised,
whilst he trembles, on the shield of the Vatican.
In him all centres, all is absorbed. If he gives
way, all topples down ; if he totters, all goes
wrong. After this, what becomes of that Church
of France so magnificently eulogized by Bossuet ?
A breath is enough to scatter it in pieces.
The end is that, despite themselves, they commu-
nicate death to that which they wish to be eternal.
For, in short, you can make no one believe that
there is more appearance of life when vitality is
confined to one member, than when it is diffused
throughout the Christian univei'se. For fifteen
centui'ies Christendom was submissive to the spiri-
tual yoke of the Church, the image of the company
of the Apostles. But this yoke did not content
them; and they sought to bow down the whole
world under the hand of one only master. On
this point, I feel how inadequate my own words
are, so borrow the language of another. They
have sought (this is the accusation flung in their
teeth by the bishop of Paris, in open council, at
Trent) to make the spouse of Jesus Christ a prostitute
at the pleasure of man. And this is what the Chris-
tian world will never forgive them. A frank, open
war, might in time have been forgotten, or even
maxims of false piety and stratagems of detail :
but to take all at once possession of the human
mind by ambuscade ; to invite, beguile it in the
name of inward independence, of free will, and to
precipitate it, without a moment's grace, into ever-
lasting bondage, is an attempt wliich rouses the
simplest to indignation. And, as its aim is not one
country only, but threatens all humanity, the re-
probation is not confined to one people, but extends
to all. There nmst have been a universal crime to
account for a universal chastisement.
They have attempted to take the conscience of
the world by surprise. When, in IfiOG, they were
expelled from an eminently Catholic city, from
Venice, this mildest people of the earth followed
them in crowds to the sea-shore, with the parting
cry, " Away ! Ill betide you ! " Andate in inalora!
This cry was re-echoed in the two following cen-
turies : in Bohemia in 1618 ; at Naples and in the
Low Countries in lfi22 ; in India in 1623 ; in
Russia in 1676 ; in Portugal in 1759 ; in Spain in
1767 ; in France in 1764 ; at Rome and throughout
Christendom in 177^. In our days if men, thanks
to God, more patient and enduring, say nothing,
still, beware of awaking that great echo, whilst,
from one end of Europe to the other, alt things are
still exclaiming, as on the shores of Venice, Andate
in malora!
These are the observations I have to offer on the
fundamental maxims of the Order of Jesus. 1
have confined myself to an exposition of its prin-
ciples ; and have shown how rigorously faithful
the order has been to them in all times ; how there
were two individuals in the person of its founder —
a hermit and a politician ; and how this duality of
piety and Machiavelism has been reproduced in
all departments ; in theology by Laynez and Bellar-
min ; in education by the pious Fi'ancis Borgia
and the crafty Aquaviva ; in the missions by St.
Francis Xavier and by the apostates of China ;
and, to sum up all in one word, by the fusion of
Spanish devotion with Italian policy.
We have combated Jesuitism in the spiritual
order. This is not enough. Let us, still, all watch,
lest it find its way into the temporal order.
Grievous is it assuredly, that it should have en-
tered the Church,- but it would be ruin were Jesuit-
ism to insinuate itself into morals and into the
state ; for you need not be told that policy, philo-
sophy, art, science, and letters have a .Jesuitism of
their own as well as religion. Everywhere it con-
sists in one thing — the giving to appeai'ances the
signs of reality. What would a nation be, whose
political condition were to present all the appear-
ances of movement and of liberty — ingenious clock-
work, assemblies, discussions, opposing doctrines
and watchwords, and conflicting names of things,
and yet, with all this outward " hurly-burly," it
was constantly to revolve in the same circle ?
Would there not be cause to fear that all these out-
ward shows and semblances of life would gradually
accustom it to do without the essential chai'acters
of things ?
What would a philosophy be that should seek at
any cost to exalt its own orthodoxy 1 Would there
not be cause for fear that, without attaining to the
rigour of theology, it would lose the God within ?
What would art be, if it were to substitute a jar-
gon of words for the spontaneous emotions of the
mind ? What, on such suppositions, would all
these things be, — save the spirit of Jesuitism trans-
ferred into the temporal order ?
I say not that these things are consummated ; I
say that they threaten the world. And what
means have we of preventing tliem ? The means
are in you, in you who are full of a young life that
stops not to calculate. Preserve those feelings in
their freshness; for they are given you, not for
yourselves, but to renew the world and bring it back
again to youth. I know that all opinions are at the
present day obnoxious to suspicion ; but freeze not
up your young spring of life by too many suspicions;
and do not believe, that in this country of ours, men
of heart will ever be wanting, resolved to go as far
in their acts as they do in their thoughts. Must 1
tell you the sure means of contending with Jesuit-
ism under all its forms ? That means does not con-
sist in my glozing from this chair and talking sen-
timents which every one can talk better than my-
self, or in your listening to me with kindness and
attention. ' Words are of little use amidst the stra-
tagems of the world around us. No ; life, life is
what is wanted : and, before we separate, we must
here publicly undertake for each other to regulate
54
JESUITS AND JESUITISM.
our life on the maxims most opposed to those which
T have described — that is, to persevere to the end,
and in all things, in sincerity, truth, and liberty.
In other words, we must promise to remain faithlul
to the genius of Fi'ance, which is at once progress,
elastic strength, honourable purpose ; for it is by
these signs that the foreigner knows you to be
Frenchmen. If, on my side, I violate this oath,
may each and all of you remind me I am forsworn
wherever we meet !
But, I hear it objected, you speak of sincerity,
yet your secret thought is that Christianity is at an
end, and you say not a word of it. Declare at
least, of all this medley of beliefs of our time, what
sect you design to occupy its place.
I have not exaggerated my orthodoxy ; nor do I
wish to exaggerate the sectarian spirit attributed to
me. Since the question is put, we will answer it
aloud. We are of the communion of Descartes, of
Turenne, of Latour d'Auvergne, of Napoleon ; we
are not of the religion of Louis XI. — of Catherine de
Medicis, of Father Le Tellier, of M. de Maistre, or
even of that of M. de Talleyrand.
So far, indeed, am I from believing Christianity
at an end, that, on the contrary, I am persuaded its
true spirit is only now beginning to be applied in
the civil and political world. In the purely human
point of view, a revelation does not terminate until
it has transfused its whole soul into the living in-
stitutions of the nations ; on this reasoning, the
I'eligion of Moses gives way to the new word, after
it has interpenetrated the whole social fabric of the
Hebrews, and moulded it in its own image. The
same thing is true of Polytheism ; its last hour is
come, the instant it has thoroughly imbued with its
spirit Greek and Roman antiquity.
This laid down, turn your eyes, not on the
Pharisees of Christianity, but on the spirit of the
Gospel. Who will dare assert that the Word is
wholly incarnate in the world, is capable of no
further transformation, no new realization, and
that the source is dried up by having quenched
the thirst of so many people and states ? I look
at the world, and see one half of it still under the
Pagan law. Where are the equality, the brother-
hood, the intimate union announced unto us ?
Perchance, in the written laws ; but where will
you find them in the heart and in life ?
Christian humanity modelled herself, I grant,
on the life of Jesus Christ. I grant, too, that
I can discern, through the eighteen centuries that
are past, modern humanity weeping and groaning
in the naked manger of the middle age ; and
through numberless intellectual discords, the strag-
gles of the Scribes and Pharisees, and the manifold
poignant and national griefs of all countries — the
imitation of the chalice of hyssop and vinegar
held to the lips of the scourged nations. But
is this all the Gospel ? Is this the fellowship of
brothers met together in one and the same spirit ?
Is this union, concord, heart-felt peace amongst
all men — the aurora of the transfiguration after
the night of the sepulchre ? Is this Christ tri-
umphant on the throne of the tribes I Are not
all these things, too, part and parcel of the New
Testament ? Are we to give up all hope of unity,
of the final triumph, as a vain promise ? Are the
sword and the cup of gall all that we are to receive
of the Gospel ? Who dares to say this, although
there are many who think it ?
To prepare men's souls for this unity, this
promised oneness, is the true spirit in which the
education of the modern man should be under-
taken. The Society of Jesus could not utterly
mistake this end in the system which they applied
to all mankind ; and here I award them all praise.
The misfortune was, that, in order to lead the
world to social unity, they began, as usual, by
destroying life, by annihilating in men's souls the
ties of family, country, humanity. You can
scarcely find the three words mentioned in their
constitutions and rules, even as regards laymen.
All vibrates between the order and the papacy.
Still, I acknowledge that this abstract education,
whilst it shattered every social tie, conferred a
certain negative independence, which serves to
account for the kind of attraction it possessed.
The pupils escaped from the, at that time, stern
discipline of the paternal roof, from that of the
state, and of the world. No fault could be found
with them, so long as the Institution was content.
The being that went forth finished from this
education, was, strictly speaking, nor child, nor
citizen, nor man ; it was a Jesuit in a short coat *.
For my own part, I can understand no education
to be real but that which, far from destroying the
three homes of life— one's family, one's country,
and all mankind, brings them all into it in their
just proportion. That is real education when the
child is reared, through these stages, into fulness
of life ; when his family, first of all, instil into him,
by degrees, their cherished remembrances, those
thoughts of the past which are deeply graven
on the mother's heart ; when these, his first
ardent feelings, liis youthful fires, are extended
to his country, to France, which becomes to him a
graver mother ; when the state, taking him in its
arms, makes a citizen of him, willing and capable,
on the first signal, to rally round his country's
banner ; when, developing still more this all-liv-
ing love, he ends by enfolding humanity and all
past ages in a religious embrace ; when, at each
of these stages, he feels the hand of God rekind-
ling his young soul. This is a road towards
unity, which is not an abstraction, but each step in
which is marked by reality, and responded to by
the quick beating of the heart. This is not
formula ; it is life itself.
The greatest pleasure we could do our adver-
saries, would be, whilst opposing Christian Phari-
saism, to tlu'ow ourselves back upon absolute scep-
ticism: no, nor upon Jesuitism nor Voltaii'ianism ;
let us seek the star of France elsewhere.
I began this course liist winter, by warning my
hearers against indulging in the slumbers of the
mind, induced by material enjoyments. I must
conclude it by a like warning. It is on you that
we nmst calculate the future of France. Re-
member that your country will one day be what-
ever you in your hearts are at that moment. You,
who are on the eve of leaving in order to betake
yourselves to different careers, public or private ;
you who will to-morrow be orators, writers, magis-
trates, or greater ; you whom I am now addressing
for the last time, perhaps, if ever I have chanced
to awaken one instinct within you, one bright vision
• (" Tin Jesuits en robe courte ;" that is, one of those incor-
porated members who do not avow their connection with the
Society, but have a dispensation to mix in the world.)—
Translator.
CONCLUSION.
55
to be realized in a future day, do not ye, I
beseech you, hereafter consider these to be mere
dreams, youthful illusions, to be denied the moment
they can be applied, that is, the moment interest
begins to interfere. Neither deny, for yourselves,
your own hopes. Belie not your best thoughts,
those born within you, under God's own eye, when,
far removed from the unholy desires of the world,
unknown, poor perhaps, you stood alone in the
presence of heaven and earth. Raise, beforehand,
round yourselves, a wall which corruption cannot
overleap ; for the instant you quit these precmcts,
corruption waits to seize you as her prey.
Above all, watch ! However slightly souls may
slumber in indifference, there are, as you have
seen, on every hand, messengers of death, who
come and go through subterranean passages. To
have gained a title to rest, it is not enough to
have laboured for three days, even under a July
sun. You must fight still, not in the open streets,
but within the depths of your souls, wherever fate
shall cast you. You must fight by heart and by
thought to recover tlie victory, and to gather its
full triumph and fruition.
What I'emains to add ? One thing, which I
deem of high importance. By the diversity of
schools here at your command, you are the fa-
vourites of science and learning, as well as of
fortune. All is thrown open to you, all smiles.
Amongst the numerous objects offered to human
curiosity, you can choose that to which your in-
ward vocation summons you. You possess, waiting
on your desire, all the delights as well as all the
advantages of knowledge. But whilst you are thus
giving yourselves up to enjoyment, and generously
sowing in your minds germs of thought that will
one day spring up and blossom, and bear fruit,
how many spirits are there not, as young as you,
as devoured by the thirst of knowing all things,
but constrained by ill-fortune to devour themselves
in secret, and often to waste away in famine of the
intellect, as well as famine of the body ! One word,
would, perhaps, have been enough to have revealed
to them their vocation ; but that word they will
never hear. How many long to come and share
with you the bread of knowledge, but cannot ! As
ardent as you for good, they have enough to do to
gain their daily bread ; and they are not the smaller
number, but the greater.
If this be so, I tell you, that whatever station of
life be yours, you are the lieges of those men, and
are bound to turn to their pi'ofit, honour, advance-
ment, and dignity, all the lights you have acquired
luider a hajtpier star. I tell you that you Ijclong
to a multitude of unknown brothers, and that you
have contracted here imto them a debt of honour
— and this is, to defend, every where, their rights,
their moral existence, to make clear for them, as
far as possible, the path to knowledge and to
future eminence and happiness, which has been
thrown open to you without your having been
obliged even to knock at the gate.
Share, then, multiply the bread of the soul.
'Tis an obligation you have contracted both with
knowledge and with religion ; for it is certain that
there is a religious knowledge, and an irreligious
knowledge. The first, like the Gospel, scatters
and diffuses abroad all it possesseth ; the second,
unlike the Gospel, fears to disburse and waste its
privileges, fears to make too many the sharers in
rights, life, and power : it raises the proud, abases
the humble, enriches the rich, impoverishes the
poor. 'Tis an impious knowledge, and we will
none on't,
A word, and I have done. This struggle, which,
perhaps, after all, is now only begun, has been
good for all ; and I thank Heaven for having al-
lowed me to bear a share in it. It offers a salutary
lesson to those who can read it. Men's minds
were supposed to be divided, lukewarm ; and the
moment to be propitious for daring all. The
danger is only required to be made evident : the
spark once struck, we are banded together as
one man. The feeling on this question would be
the feeling evidenced to-morrow by all France,
on any question that brought the peril home to
the heart. Let them not stir too much, then, what
they call our ashes. Under these ashes still lives
a sacred fire.
THE END.
London: Gilbert and Hivingtojj, Printers, St. John's Square.
PRIESTS
WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
/
M. J. MICHELET,
AUTHOR OF THE " HISTORY OF FRANCE," &C.
TRANSLATED BY
G. H. SMITH, F.G.S.
LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE.
CONTENTS.
I PAGE
I Advertisement to the Fourth Edition 1
I Preface to the Third Edition ib.
Preface to the First Edition 7
Division of the Work 9
PART THE FIRST.
ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
Religious reaction in 1600. — Influence of the Jesuits
over Women and Children. — Savoy, the Vaudois ;
Violence and Gentleness. — St. Fran9ois de Sales. ... 10
CHAPTER II.
St. Franfois de Sales and Madame de Chantal. — The
Visitation. — Results of Spiritual Direction 12
CHAPTER III.
Loneliness of Woman. — Comfortable Devotion. — Mun-
dane Theology of the Jesuits and of Rome. —
Women and Children used as Instruments. — The
Thirty Years' War, 1618— 164S.— Gallant Devotion.
— Devout Romances. — Casuists 16
CHAPTER IV.
Convents. — Neighbourhood of Convents. — Convents in
the Seventeenth Century. — Contrast with the Mid-
dle Age.— The Director. — Dispute about the Direc-
tion of the Nuns. — The Jesuits gain the victory by
means of calumny 20
CHAPTER V.
Reaction of Morality. — Arnaud, 1643.— Pascal, 1657.
Abasement of the Jesuits.— How they secured the
support of the King and of the Pope and silenced
their enemies. — Discouragement of the Jesuits,
their corruption ; they protect the first Quietists ;
immorality of Quietism ; Desmarets de St. Sorlin.
— Morin burnt, a. d. 1663 22
CHAPTER VI.
Sequel of Moral Reaction.— Tartuffe, a.d. 1664—1669.
— Tartuffe in real fife. — Why Tartuffe is not a
Quietist 25
CHAPTER VII.
Appearance of Molinos, a.d. 1675 ; His success at
Rome. — French Quietists. — Madame Guyon, her
Director.— TAe rorreni*.- Mystic Death.— Can we
return'from it? 27
CHAPTER VIII.
Fenelon as Director ; his Quietism. — Maxims of the
Saints, 1697.— Fenelon and Madame de la Maison-
fort 30
CHAPTER IX.
Bossuet as Director. — Bossuet and Sister Comuau. —
Her Frankness and Imprudence.— He is a Quietist
in practice. — Devout Direction inclines to Quietism.
^Moral Paralysis 32
CHAPTER X.
The Guide of Molinos.— Part which the Director plays
in it.— Hypocritical Austerity; Immoral Doctrine.
— Molinos approved at Rome, 1675. — Molinos con-
demned at Rome, 1687.- His Manners in conform-
itywith his Doctrine.— The Spanish Molinosists.—
Mother Agueda 35
CHAPTER XI.
No more Systems.— An Emblem.— The Blood.— The
Sex. — The Immaculate. — The Sacred Heart. —
Marie Alacoque. — Double meaning of the Sacred
Heart. — The Seventeenth Century is the age of
Equivocation. — Chimerical Policy of the Jesuits.
—Father Colorabifere and Marie Alacoque, 1675.
—England.— Papist Plot.— First Altar of the Sacred
Heart, 1685.— Ruin of the Galileans, 1693 ;— of the
Quietists, 1698;— of Port Royal, 1709.— Theology de-
stroyed in the Eighteenth Century. — Materiality of
the Sacred Heart.— The Jesuit's Heart 37
PART THE SECOND.
ON DIRECTION IN GENERAI,, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTTTBT.
CHAPTER I.
Resemblances and Differences between the Seventeenth
and Nineteenth Centuries.— Christian Art.- It is
we that have restored the Church.- What it adds
to the Power of the Priest.— The Confessional 41
CHAPTER II.
Confession.— Present Education of the Young Confessor.
—The Confessor of the Middle Age :— First he be-
lieved ; Secondly, he mortified himself; Thirdly, he
was superior by education ; Fourthly, he was less
inquisitive.— The Casuists wrote for their own time.
— Dangers of the young Confessor. — How he
strengthens his tottering position 43
CHAPTER III.
Confession.— The Confessor and the Husband.— How
the Wife is isolated.— The Director.— The Directors
associated. — Ecclesiastical Policy 45
CHAPTER IV.
Habit :— its Power; its insensible beginning ; its pro-
gress.—A Second Nature :— often fatal.— A Man
taking advantage of the power of Habit.— Can we
escape? ■ *'
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
Convents. — Omnipotence of the Director.— State of the
forlorn Nun under the spy system. — Convents which
are at the same time prisons and madhouses. —
Fortune-hunting. — Barbarous Discipline. — Struggle
between the Superior and the Director. — Change of
Director.— The Magistrate 48
CHAPTER VI.
Absorption of the Will. — Tyranny over Acts, Thoughts
and Wills. — Assimilation. — Transhumanation. —
PAGE
Becoming the God of another. — Pride. — Impotence.
Pride and Concupiscence 52
CHAPTER VII.
Concupiscence. — Absorption and Assimilation con-
tinned. — Terrors of the World. — The Physician
and the Patient. — Alternatives, Postponements. —
Effects of Fear on Love. — To have all in one's
power, and yet abstain. — Struggles between the
spirit and the flesh. — Moral Death precedes Physi-
cal, and cannot be resuscitated 53
PART THE THIRD
CHAPTER 1.
Schism in Families. — The Daughter; by whom edu-
cated.— Importance of Education, and advantages
of the first Instructor. — Influence of Priests in
bringing about Marriages, and their subsequent
authority 56
CHAPTER II.
The Wife.— The Husband does not make the Wife his
companion, and the partner of his thoughts.— The
result to be anticipated from Mutual Contidence. —
The Wife turns for comfort to her Son ; and he is
removed from her.— Her Loneliness and Weariness.
— A pious young Man.— The Spiritual and the
Worldly Man : which of the two is now the Mor-
tified Man? 58
CHAPTER III.
The Mother. She alone is the Proper Instructress of the
Child for years. — Intellectual Nourishment ; Ges-
tation, Incubation, Education. — The Child shields
the Mother, the Mother the Child.— She possesses
its Native Originality : an originality to be modified
by Public Education, and which is modified even
by the Father whilst the Mother would preserve it.
— Maternal Weakness : still the Mother wishes to
make the Son a Hero. — Heroic disinterestedness of
the Mother's Love 61
CHAPTER IV.
On Love. — Love would elevate, not absorb. — The
false Theory of our Opponents, and their dangerous
Practice. — Love would create an Equal, to be loved
freely. — Love little known in the Middle Age.—
The Material Love. — Social Love. — Family House-
hold Gods 63
One Word to the Priests 65
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
This edition lias been carefully revised by the
author. After the most diligent scrutiny he has
been able to discover only one questionable fact,
and this he has expunged.
He has also verified the greater number of the
quotations he had made, by reference to the origi-
nals— to St. Fran9ois de Sales, Bossuet, &c. ; and
has not found a single one incorrectly given.
Besides, as he has generally inserted the date,
(especially when quoting the letters), as well as
specified the page, the original may easily be exa-
mined in any edition.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
This book has produced an effect on my opponents
I could never have anticipated. It has driven them
beyond all bounds, and made them forget, not only
their own self-respect, but that respect for God's
own temple which they ought to be the first to im-
press upon us. From the pulpit, and before their
congregations, they preach against an individual of
their own day, name him by his name, and hold up
both book and author to the hatred of those who
cannot read, and who never will read the book.
The heads of the clergy must have been keenly
sensible of the blow to have launched these furious
preachers against me.
Apparently, I have gone too straight to the mark.
Woman is their sensitive point. The spiritual
direction and government of women is the vital part
of ecclesiastical power ; to be defended unto the
death. Strike anywhere else, if you like, but not
here. Attack doctrines, and no harm is done.
Your attack can be met with affected indignation *,
or frigid declamation. But, if you take it into your
head to touch this reserved point the matter grows
serious, and they lose themselves in their wratli.
'Tis a sorry spectacle to see pontiffs, elders of
the people, gesticulating, foaming at the mouth,
gnashing their teeth +. Turn your eyes from them,
• They will not be at the trouble. A young eclectic de-
clares himself opposed to all revealed religions, and can
hardly tolerate them provisionally; but he, at the same time,
commences an attack on an opponent of the clergy's — forth-
with, he is welcomed and caressed.
t These expressions will not appear exaggerated to such
as have read the furious libel of the bishop of Chartres ; so
furious that a public print has expressed its surprise at my
not having brought an action for difamation. — But this silly
violence is less culpable than the insinuations they gently
whisper in their books, newspapers, and in society, &c. At
young people ; epileptic convulsions are sometimes
catching. Let us leave them, renounce their com-
pany, and resume our study without loss of time ;
" Art is long, life short."
I remember reading in the correspondence of
San Carlo Borromeo that one of his friends, a grave
personage, of high rank, having blamed some
Jesuit for his predilection for confessing nuns,
was made the object of a fierce and virulent attack.
The Jesuit felt his strength ; a fashionable preacher,
in high favour at court, and still higher at the court
of Rome, he felt that he was free to go any lengths,
and so allowed himself full scope, and was vio-
lent and insolent at pleasure. Still, his grave
censor remained unmoved. On this, he lost all
command of himself, and descended to the lowest
one time, they lay to my charge all that may have been done
by other Michelets, to whom I am not even related (for in-
stance, Michelet of Languedoc, a poet and soldier during the
Restoration); at another, they pretend, notwithsta^iding the
contradiction in my preface, that the present work formed
the course of Lectures delivered by me in 1844. Next, a
petition is trumped up and forwarded from Marseilles, pray-
ing that I be dismissed my Professor's chair.— However, so
far from wishing to impose silence on my adversaries, I
have asserted their right to the same freedom of teaching
which I claim for myself: —
" I see among you," were my words in my Lecture of
February 27th, 1845, " most of those who have aided us in
maintaining freedom of speech for this chair; and we shall
respect this same freedom in our adversaries. This is not
an act of chivalry, but of the merest duty. It is, too, essen-
tial to the cause of truth, that no objections should be sup-
pressed, but free expression given to all arguments on both
sides. Rely on truth's enduring and conquering. We pass
away, truth endures and triumphs ; but as long as her oppo-
nents have a word left unsaid, her triumph must be sulUed
with a doubt."
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
abuse. The other, calm and collected, made
him no reply, but let him declaim, threaten, and
flourish his arras about without interruption : all
that he did was to keep his eyes fixed on his feet.
" Why did you look so at his feet ?" inquired a
witness of the scene, when the Jesuit was gone. —
" Because," was the reply, " I expected every
moment to see the cloven hoof ; this madman
might well be taken for the tempter under the
guise of a Jesuit."
A prelate sheds tears by anticipation over the
fate of the priests whom I doom to martyrdom.
Alas ! this martyrdom is that which they are all
claiming for themselves, either aloud or in a
whispei" — namely, marriage.
Not to dwell on the only too well-known disad-
vantages of the priest's actual state, it seems to me
that if he is to be the family adviser, it would
be well for him to be able to speak out of the
fulness of his own knowledge ; that as a married
man, (or, still better, a widower,) ripened by age
and by experience, having known love and the
feelings it brings in its train, and enlightened
by domestic affections on those mysteries of moral
life which must be felt to be known, he would
come to his task with at once a finer feeling and a
surer judgment.
True it is, that the champions of the clergy have
lately drawn such a picture of marriage, as may,
perhaps, be likely to deter many from entering the
state. They have improved upon the most formid-
able of the allegations brought by our novelists and
modern socialists against the legal tie ; and, ac-
cording to which, marriage, imprudently sought by
lovers as the confirmation of love, is nothing but
warfare, and people marry only to fight. To de-
grade the virtue of the sacrament lower than this
is impossible.
The sacrament of mari'iage, according to these
doctors, is of no earthly use, except a thii'd party
stand ever between those whom it has iniited,
rather, between the combatants, to separate them.
It has been generally supposed, that marriage
required only two persons. Not so, now-a-days.
The new system, according to their own showing,
is as follows : — Marriage consists of three ele-
ments ; 1st, Man, the strong, the violent ; 2nd,
Woman, the being weak by nature ; 3rd, the Priest,
born man and strong, but who chooses to make
himself weak, to grow like unto woman, and who,
in virtue of his affinity to both, can interfere be-
tween them.
To interfere, to place oneself between those who
ought to constitute only one ! . . . This is effecting
a singular change in the idea that has been formed
of marriage, ever since the beginning of the
world.
But this is not all. They acknowledge that they
do not mean an impartial intei-ference which would
favour either party alternately. No; 'tis the wife
only they address ; 'tis she whom they take upon
themselves to protect against her natural protector.
They offer to unite with her in reforming the husband.
If it were a recognized fact, that marriage, in-
stead of being unity in two persons, were the union
of one of the two with a stranger, it would grow
into disuse. Two against one would be too un-
equal a match ; and few would be brave enough to
dare the hazard. The only marriages contracted
would be marriages for monej', already far too
numerous. Men in difficulties would go on mar-
rying ; as, for instance, the mei'cantileman, driven
by a pitiless creditor to the alternative of marriage
or a prison.
To refonn oneself — to re make oneself, to re-cast
oneself, to change one's nature ! A great and a
difficult matter. But the change would have no
merit except it were a free act, and not brought
about by a kind of domestic persecution, of fire-
side war.
Above all, we ought to know whether reformation
means improvement ; whether the act of reforming
oneself means the act of mounting, of rising in
the moral scale, of becoming better and wiser. If
so, if to rise, well and good : but, suppose it be to
sink
And, in the first place, the wisdom proposed as
our object does not mean knowledge. " What is
the use of knowledge and literature ? They are
mere luxuries ; vain and dangerous trappings of
the mind, but alien from the soul." . . . We will
let this pass ; we will not dispute this empty dis-
tinction which would distinguish between mind and
soul, as if ignorance were innocence, and as if a
poor insipid, idiotic, literature could enrich one
with the gifts of the soul and the heart.
But this said thing, the heart, where is it ? Let
them give us a glimpse of it. How happens it
that they who undertake to develop the heart in
others,nianage to show no signs of it themselves?. . .
When the living fount of the heart is really within,
there is no hiding it, for its springs will gush forth.
Dam them up here ; they will overflow close by.
Try to choke the springs of the Rhone, or of the
Rhine ; you would find it an easier task than sealing
up the fount of the heart.
Idle images, and out of place here, I acknow-
ledge. Into what an Arabia Dcserta nmst I now
plunge, with such a subject before me !
We are in a church ! 'Tis crowded, filled with
human beings, who, after long wanderings, have
entered athirst, in the hope of finding some relief.
There they wait, open-mouthed — will but one poor
drop of dew fall to refresh their parched tongues ?
No ; the pi'eacher mounts the pulpit ; a decent,
respectable, di'y personage, who never moves you,
but contents himself with proving. You have a
grand show of reasoning, high pretensions to logic,
premises laid down with infinite solemnity . . .
and then trenchant conclusions, but never the
middle term of the argument. " These things re-
quire no proof." . . . Why, then, wretched rea-
soner, raise such a clamour about proofs ?
Don't prove, then; love — and we will forgive yon
all the rest. Speak one word from the heart to
support this longing crowd. . . . Those heads,
mark me, fair or dark, clustered round the pulpit,
are not blocks of stone, but so many living souls. . .
Those, yonder, are the young ; they are the future,
and, to-morrow, will be the world ; happy are they,
elastic and buoyant in spirit, all fresh and whole
from their Maker's hand, untamed by the lessons
of life, and bounding along the precipice's edge
without a thought of danger. What ! and cannot
youth move you, — youth, with its uncertain future,
its probable perils, its liopes ever full of anxious
fears ; can nothing awaken paternal feelings within
you ?
There, where your eye falls on a dazzling group,
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
'1
on those women, and flowers, and gay and grace-
ful array tliat gladdens the sight, there, in the
midst of all that brilliancy, is much of suff'ering.
. . . One word, I pray you, for them. . . . You
know they are your daughters ; the dear ones
wlio every evening unreservedly throw themselves
weeping and in frank confession at your feet. On
you they rely ; they liave no secrets from you.
You kno'w their every wound. Give them, then,
one word of comfort. You can find no difficulty
in so doing. What man, on seeing a woman's
heart bleeding in his hand, but would feel the words
that heal gushing from his own ! ... In default
of words, the dumb would give that which outweighs
all words — tears !
What must we think of those who can offer no
other remedy to this crowd of sick, suffering, con-
fiding beings, than academic lore, showy common-
places, antiquated paradoxes, Bonapartism, social-
ism, and heaven knows what besides !
The fact, there is no denying, betrays great
aridity, great want of heart.
Ah ! dry and hard ye are ; this I felt sensibly
the other day (in December last), on reading a
public notice of the archbishop's, which stared at
me from the walls. It related to an unhappy being
who had committed suicide in the church of St.
Gervais. Had he been driven to the rash act by
want, or ungovernable passion, or by madness ; or,
at this gloomy season, by spleen, by prostration of
the moral powers ? Nothing had transpired to
throw light upon the cause : there were the body,
and the blood on the pavement, for all explanation.
By what accumulated griefs, disappointments, ago-
nies, had he been impelled to do this violence to
nature ? Through how many circles of moral hell
had he sunk before sounding the bottom of the
abyss? This none could tell; still, no human
being with a grahi of imagination in his heart, but
discerns, within the silent shadows which thicken
round such au end, a something that calls for tears
and prayer.
That man, liowever, is not M. Affre. Read the
notice, and see. It gives compassion to the defiled
church, pity to the sullied flagstone — to the de-
ceased, anathema. Yet, Christian or not, guilty
or not, was he not still a man, my lord ? Could
you not, whilst condemning the suicide, let fall a
word of pity by the way ? . . . No, not one human
sentiment ; not a word for that poor soul which,
over and above its own misery (a fearful misery,
since, apparently, it was insupportable), is gone, all
alone and accursed, to try the great adventure of
the life to come and of the Judgment. . . . Ah !
may the misery he endured, and this very severity *
which pursues him after death, be counted unto
him for something !
A similar impression had been produced upon
me some time before, by another and a very different
circumstance.
I had called, on business, on the venerable sister
* * *. She was from home. Two persons wei'e
* This severity has been conspicuous in tlie archbishop's
conduct in regard to the ecclesiastical pulilisliers of Paris,
who print for the whole of France. M. Affre's predecessors
refrained from enforcing against these ancient and pious
firms the strict letter of the law, siiicl/iin jus, which ieems
to grant a monopoly to the bishops. They feared they might
be suspected of coveting the eu'irmous gains it would pro-
duce.
sitting in the little parlour, waiting for her return,
— a lady, and a jiriest advanced in years. The
lady had apparently come on some charitable
errand ; the priest, as being one of the masters
and lords of every pious foundation, seemed quite
at home ; and, to while away the time, was writing
his letters at sister » * « 's desk. As he concluded
each letter, he would pause for a moment, and
give his ear to the lady. The latter, a gentle-
looking being, on whom the cares of life had left
their traces, would not, perhaps, have attracted any
particular attention, but for the peculiar air of
goodness she wore, and the interest she awakened
by some absorbing passion or grief, which evidently
occupied her whole soul. ... I heard, without
listening . . •. she had lost her son. . . .
An only son, full of heart, enthusiasm, and of
courage ; an heroic child, who, on quitting the
Polytechnic school, turned his back on all — on
wealth and the enjoyments of wealth ; on pleasure,
ease, and on a mother like herself! . . . and,
without looking to the right or to the left, hurried
to Marseilles, to Algiers, to the enemy, to death ! . . .
The poor woman, engrossed by one idea, seized
an opportunity, as she could, to put in a word ; she
felt the want of speaking, of appealing to the sym-
pathies. It w'as a highly touching and natural,
and by no means melodramatic scene — whispered
complaints and sighs, but no tears ; and the more
affecting from the self-restraint imposed.
She plainly lost her words ; the priest's mind
was elsewhere. He could not help listening, ami
making an occasional reply (the lady was wealthy,
and her carriage at the door) ; but he extricated
Iiimself by the cut and dried formul£s,"Yes, madam ;
Providence tries us. . . . We are chastised for our
own good. . . . Such things seem hard. . . ."
Not discouraged by these cold and unmeaning
phrases, the lady drew her chair neai'er to him,
thinking to make him hear better. . . • "Ah! sir,
how find words to tell you? . . . Ah! how make
you comprehend so terrible a blow ? . . ." She
would have drawn tears from a corpse.
Have you ever seen the harrowing spectacle of
the poor hound, which, having received, through
accident, the contents of his master's gun, drags
himself to him and licks his hands, as if beseeching
his help ? . . . The comparison will seem a strange
one to those who have not witnessed the circum-
stance ; yet, at that moment, the image rose up
before me. . . . This woman, wounded unto death,
yet so gentle in the midst of her suff'erings, seemed
to drag herself to the feet of the priest, and to
implore for pity.
I looked at the priest, a vulgar, hard man, like
so many of his brethren, and neither bad nor good.
There was nothing to lead one to suppose him iron-
hearted ; he was simply a block of wood. It w:is
clear that not a word which had reached his ear,
had entered. One sense was wanting to him. Why
tease a blind man, by speaking to him of colour I
He will answer at random, and may sometimes
make almost a lucky guess ; but to what end ? He
cannot rise to any distinct perception.
Do not suppose that the workings of the heart
are more easily guessed at. A man without wife
or child may study for ten thousand years, both in
books and in the world, the mysteries of family
life, and yet will know nothing of them when he
has done. Look at these said priests : they do not
b2
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
lack time, opportunity, or means for acquiring
such knowledge : they pass their lives with women
who tell them more than they do their husbands ;
they know, and yet do not know ; whilst let into
all of woman, her acts and thoughts, they remain
ignorant of what is best within her, of her inmost
self, of her life of lives. They can hardly com-
prehend her as mistress (whether of God or man),
still less as bride, not at all as mother. There is
nothing more painful than to see the sorry figure
they make when flattering a mother, by awkward
attempts at nursing her child. They look like
so many fawning courtiers attached to the baby,
instead of any thing fatherly.
What I most pity in a man condemned to
celibacy is not only the privation he has to un-
dergo of the heart's sweetest joys, but that innu-
merable objects, both in the natural and moral
world, are and must remain a sealed book to him.
Many have fancied that by so isolating themselves
they gave up their whole life to knowledge ; when
the truth is, the depths of knowledge never can
be sounded in a dry and truncated existence. Their
knowledge may be various, and, superficially,
immense ; but it is all on the surface, and never
sinks within. Celibacy stimulates to restless
activity in researches, in intrigues, and in worldly
matters, to a sort of hunter's stern eagerness of
chase, to the sharp, sour, disputatious subtilty of the
schoolman; at least, such is the eff"ect it produced
at its best epoch. If it sharpens the senses and
renders them weak against temptation, it does not
soften the heart •. Our terrorists of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries were monks f. The mo-
nastic prisons were ever the most cruel J. A
systematically negative life, a life of death, de-
velops in man instincts hostile to life ; he who is
himself made to sufFei-, readily inflicts suffering on
others. The harmonious and productive qualities
of our nature, which are connected on the one
hand with goodness, on the other, with genius
and the highest order of invention, can seldom
withstand this partial suicide.
There are two classes of persons, who necessarily
contract much insensibility — surgeons and priests.
The constant sight of suffering and of death is
gradually destructive to the sympathetic faculties.
There is this difference, however, between the
two, that the insensibility of the surgeon is not
without its usefulness : he would operate with a
trembling hand were his heart to be touched :
whilst the business of the priest, on the contrary,
requires his feelings to be aroused, since sympathy
would, in many cases, be the most efficacious
remedy for the troubles of the soul. And, in-
dependently of what we have just remarked as
to the natural desiccation produced by this sterile
life, we must further bear in mind that the priest,
who stands in our days opposed to the spirit of the
age, and condemns all progress, is less than ever
inclined to pity such sinners, such rebellious
* The heart may be insensible, whilst the senses are very
inflammable. Let no one object to me that this statement
is in contradiction to the dangers I point out in the present
worlv; it is only an apparent one.
t See, above all, as regards the fifteenth century, my
History of France (b. viii. vol. ii., in Whittaker's " Popular
Library").
t Mabillon; De VEmprisonnement Monastique, (Euvres
Posthumes, ii. 327.
natui'es. The physician who dislikes his patient,
is the least fit to cure him.
It is sad to think of, that these men, of small
sympathies, and additionally embittered by opposi-
tion, should happen to have in their power the
sweetest half of human kind, — the one which has
preserved the most heart, which has remained
closest to nature, which, in the general corruption
of manners, has been the least cori'upted by in-
terest and the envious passions.
In other words, they who love the least rule
those who love the most.
To know the use they make of this sovereignty
over women, we must not stop at their wheedling
and insinuating ways with the great and fashionable,
but inquire into their conduct towards those poor
women whom they need not " stand mammering
on" with, especially towards those who, imprisoned
in their nunneries, are at the mercy of their ec-
clesiastical superiors, whom they hold under their
key, undertaking to be their sole protectors.
We are not too sure about this protection. We
gave credence to it for a long time, and were
simple enough to say to ourselves, that the law
had no share in this realm of grace. . . . And, lo !
from these peaceful asylums, these little paradises,
we liear sobs and wailings. , . .
I am not alluding to convents turned into houses
of correction, nor to the affairs of Sens, Avignon,
Poitiers, nor to suicides committed, alas ! much
nearer home.
No; I am alluding solely to the most honourable
houses, the most holy nuns. What sort of a pro-
tection is it that they receive from the sph'itual
power.
As regards tJie soul, first of all, the conscience,
that first of goods, to which they sacrifice all the
goods of the world Is it true that the
Sosurs d'Hopltal, who passed for Jansenists, were
not long since persecuted in order to force them
to denounce the secret directors, whom they were
supposed to have, and that it was only the threat-
ening interference of a magistrate, a celebrated
orator, and eminent Galilean, that procured them
a respite ?
And as regards the body, as regards that personal
liberty which becomes the slave's the instant he
touches the sacred soil of France, does the spiritual
power secure it to the nuns ? Is it true that a
Carmelite nun, in a convent sixty leagues from
Paris was kept in chaiHS there for several months,
and afterwards confined for nine years in a mad-
house 1
Is it true that a Benedictine nun has been im-
mured in a kind of hi pace *, then in an apartment
amongst mad women, amidst the fearful cries, the
howls, the impure exclamations of the dissolute,
who, from excess to excess, have been hurried on
to madness f •
• (The In Pace, — the last words addressed to the poor nun
or monk, before being walled up for ever : — " Sinful brother,
or sister, go in peace. !") Translator.
t It may be that I should not have alluded to these cir-
cumstances, had they not already been made known by the
papers and reviews. However, many magistrates have al-
ready signified their opinion as regards various similar
occurrences in the same neighbourhood. An attorney gene-
ral writes to the sub-prefect:—"! have come to the same
conclusion as you, that sister * * * was perfectly sane. Longer
confinement would only, perhaps, have served to drive her
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
This unhappy being, whose sole crime is her in-
tellectuality, her love of writing, of painting flowers,
was for many years both the manager and in-
structress of her house ; she taught most of her
sisters to read. What is it that she now asks — the
punishment of her enemies ? No ; the comfort of
confession, of communicating — the food, in fact, of
her advanced years.
" But the bishop knew nothing of all this ?" . . .
The bishop knew all, " and was much moved," . . .
and he did nothing. . . . The chaplain to the house
knew that a nun was about to be put in pace. " He
sighed," and did nothing. . . . The vicar-general
did not sigh, but sided against the nun. His ulti-
matum was that she should be left to die of hunger,
or return to her dungeon.
Who showed himself the true bishop in this busi-
ness 2 The magistrate. . . . Who showed himself
the priest ? The bai-rister, a studious young man,
who had left the bar for the pursuits of science,
but who, perceiving the unhappy woman to be to-
tally unfriended, and that no one dared undertake
her defence, or publish in her behalf, (deterred by
this silly terrorism,) took the matter in hand, spoke,
acted, wrote, travelled in the depth of winter, fol-
lowed up all necessary proceedings, and made
every sacrifice both of money and of time. . . .
Six months of his life. . . . May God reward him
for it !
Who is the good Samaritan here ? Who has
shown himself the neighbour of the distressed ? who
has set upon his legs the victim left senseless
on the highway, whilst the Pharisees passed to the
other side ? . . . Who is the true priest, the father ?
A witty writer of the day calls all those magistrates
who interfered in church-matters, «i^/a(/i«rs. He
speaks ironically. However, they deserve the name*.
By whom is it given to them ? By the afflicted,
who are members of Christ, and who, as such, are,
out of her senses, &c." Letter from the Attorney-General,
M. Sorbier, referred to in the Memoirs de M. Tillard on be-
half of the sister Marie Lemonnier, p. 65.
• And they have long deserved it. The history would be
a long and a glorious one to write. It is enough to recall to
the reader's mind, that in 1629, a decree was passed, at the in-
stigation of the attorney-general, prohibiting monks from
inflicting perpetual imprisonment, the In pace, &:c. Never-
theless, these cruelties went on ; and, towards the close of
the century, the good and learned Mabillon composed (for
himself alone, apparently for the comfort of his heart) the
little treatise entitled De VEmprisonnemeyil Monastique,
which was not published until after his death. He states
therein that as early as 1350 the parliament (that of Toulouse,
noted for its severity) was obliged to restrain the cruelty of
the monks : — " The king was horror-struck by this inhu-
manity, and ordained that the superiors should visit these
poor beings (the prisoners) twice a month, and should allow
them to be visited by what other monks they might require
twice likewise (that is, he secured their being visited at
least once a week). He expedited letters-patent to this
effect; and, notwithstandhig the strenuous efforts of the
mendicant orders to procure the repeal of the ordinance,
they were compelled to observe it— His Majesty and his
council conceiving it barbarous to deprive of all consolation
poor wretches overwhelmed with griefs and suffering. Regis-
tres du Parlement du Languedoc, a.d. 1350. Strange, in-
deed, to find monks and priests, who ought to be models of
mildness and compassion, obliged to learn from secular
princes and magistrates the first principles of that humanity
which should guide their conduct towards their brothers."
Mabillon, De V Emprisonnement Monastique, OEuvres Post-
humes, ii. 323, 326.
in my opinion, the Church as well. . . . Yes ; they
are called fathers, on account of their fatherly sense
of justice.
Too long has their praiseworthy interference been
met at the threshold of nunneries, by these crafty
words:—" What are you about to do ? . . . Would
you force your way in here to disturb the peace of
these pious asylums, to scare these fearful virgins ?
. - . Nay ; it is they who are calling out " Help,
Help ; " we hear them as we stand here.
Lajrmen, all of us, whosoever and whatsoever we
may be, — magistrates, statesmen, writers, solitary
thinkers, we ought, from this day forward, to take
in hand the cause of woman, in a very different
manner from what we have hitherto done.
We cannot leave them in the hard, unfeeling, and,
moreover, in more than one particular, unsafe
hands in which they are now placed.
There can be no greater incentive, or one more
worthy of banding us together as one man. Let us
come to an understanding hereupon, I beseech you.
This is the one thing holy, above all. Let us agree
to tlie truce of God ; we can afterwards renew our
disputes at leisure.
And, first of all, let us frankly confess to our-
selves. When the ailment is once confessed and
known, the probability of cure is the nearer.
Whom are we to accuse, in the present jtmcture of
affairs ?
Not the Jesuits, who are prosecuting their trade
of Jesuits. Not the priests ; who are dangerous,
restless, violent, only because they are unhappy.
No ; it is we ourselves whom we ought to ac-
cuse.
If the dead revisit the open day, if those Gothic
spirits haunt our streets under the noontide blaze,
it is because the living have suffered the spirit of
life to grow faint within them. Deposited by his-
tory by the side of the dead of antiquity, duly
buried and blessed, and all funereal rites observed,
how comes it that they reappear ? . . . The sight
of them alone is a great sign, a grave warning.
And this has been permitted, ye men of the
present day, to call you back to yourselves and
remind you of what you ought to be. — Were the
future that is in you to shine forth in full light, who
would then revert his eyes to the shades and night
that are evanishing ?
It is for you to discover the future, for you to
make it. The future is not a thing already made,
which you are to look to receive some fine morning.
If the future is already within you, as a germ '
transmitted from the furthest past, let it also be
within you as a desire for progress, a wish for im-
provement, a paternal vow for the happiness of
those that are to come after you. Love by antici-
pation the unknown son which is called the future,
work for it, and it will be bom.
That day on which ye shall feel within you the
future man, the man of magnanimous will, the
family bond is restored. Woman will follow you
everywhere, when once she can say to herself — " I
am the wife of the strong man."
The strength of the modern world is manifested
in the powerful liberty with which you go on dis-
entangling reality from forms, the spirit from the
dead letter. *, . . Why not reveal to your com-
* Whether as regards the highest sciences, or the minutest
details of business.
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
pauion for life that within you which is your breath
of life ? She passes days, years, by your side, with-
out seeing or knowing you, in your real greatness.
Were she to behold you walking forward free,
strong, and fecund in the paths of action and of
knowledge, she would not remain chained down to
material idolatries, enslaved to the dry letter,
but would elevate herself to a freer, purer faith,
and you would be one in the faith. She would be
the guardian of the common treasure of your reli-
gious life, for you to draw upon in your hour of
weariness ; and when the vital unity waxed weak
within you, through the distraction of your labours,
studies, and business, she would re-infuse into your
thoughts and life, the true and ouly unity— God.
I will not attempt to crowd a volume * into a
small preface, and so shall add but one more ar-
gument, but which will, at the same time, serve
both fully to develop and to render more definite
the idea I wish to impress.
Man should nourish woman. He ought to feed
spiritually (and materially, if he can) her who
nourishes him with her love, her milk, and her
blood.
Our opponents give bad food to woman ; we give
her none.
Woman, in easy circumstances ; woman, sweetly
sheltered, apparently, in the bosom of her family ;
woman, the gay, the dazzling, the happy — at least,
so esteemed to be — we leave without spiritual
food.
Woman, poor, solitary, hard-working, and mise-
rable, engrossed by the care of earning her daily
bread, we leave without contributing to her
material food.
All these women, who are or who will be mothers,
we leave fasting (both in soul and body), and we
are punished, therefore, especially by the rising
generation, for our neglect to supply them with the
props of life.
I am well pleased to believe that this does not
proceed from want of good-will, genei-ally, but
from want of time and attention. We live in one
continued hurry, hardly to be called life ; and, chas-
ing this or that petty object with the hunter's
earnestness, neglect the great ones.
You, a man of energy and persevering labour,
whether devoted to study or plunged in the active
business of life, want time, you say, to make your
wife the partner of your daily progress, and leave
her to weariness, to frivolous conversations, to
attending vain sermons, to silly books, so that,
sinking below herself, becoming less than woman,
• How many things have crowded to my mind, whilst
writing this work, which I have been obliged to omit! I
may instance the intimate relation whicn subsists between
the three questions of education, spiritual direction, and
penitentiary reform ; three branches of the same science. —
The study of spiritual direc'ion necessarily throws light upon
education ; and experiments in it are, perhaps, more instruc-
tive than those made upon the child, being made on a person
who is not in a state of dream (as the child is), but fully awak-
ened, in the lucid state, with the intellectual faculties de-
veloped, and, moreover, seriously disposed to obey. Not-
withstanding the clouds of mysticism, which lessen the
transparency of the views here attainable, the science of edu-
cation wOl derive great advanlaije from the experiences of
direction, so carefully described by luminous minds who
knew how both to see and analyze.
less than infant, she will be unable to mould your
son, and will enjoy neither a mother's influence nor
authoi'ity. . . . Well ! you will find time, as years
go on, to labour in vain to remake that which
cannot be remade, and to run after a son, who,
from the day he enters school, and thence the
University, and thence the world, is hardly cog-
nizant of his family ; and who, should he travel a
little, and meet you oii his return, will ask you your
name. . . . The mother alone would have formed
your son for you ; but, to this end, you ought to
have formed her as wife ; you ought to have for-
tified her with your own sentiments and ideas, to
have nourished her with your life.
If I look beyond the family-circle, and the do-
mestic aff'ections, I find that our neglect of woman
amounts to hard-heartedness. And this neglect is at-
tended by cruel results, which rebound on ourselves.
You conceive yourself a good and a feeling man;
you are not insensible to the fate of the poor among
the other sex : the old among them remind you of
your mother, the young of your daughter. But
you have not time to see or to know that, old or
young, they are literally dying of hunger.
There are two machines incessantly at work for
their extermination — the grand factory, the con-
vent, which manufactures for little or nothing,
not requiring to live out of its labour ; and next,
the large partnership concern, or wholesale house *
{magasin en commatidite) which buys of the convent,
and is gradually breaking up the small shops that
used to give employment to the workwoman. There
are two chances left for the latter — the Seine, or
to find at night some heartless profligate to take
advantage of her huugei*. . . .
Man receives almost as much from public chai'ity
as woman. This is unjust, for his resources are
infinitely more numerous. He is the stronger. A
greater variety of employments is open to him ;
and he has more facilities for making a beginning,
for pushing his way ; more power of moving from
place to place in search of work. He can travel,
enlist, emigrate. Without mentioning foreign
countries where manual labour* fetches high wages,
I know provinces in our own country, where there is
a scarcity of day-labourers and men-servants, and
where, consequently, they are in great request.
Man can come and go. Woman stops where she
is, and dies.
If this workwoman, killed by the competition of
the convent, drags herself to the door of the con-
vent, does she meet with an asylum there ? . . .
Powerless as she is, she needs for this the active
protection of an influential priest, a protection
reserved for those devout persons who have had
time to go through the Mois de Marie, the Cate-
chismes de Persiverancef, &c. &c.; for those who
have been long under the ecclesiastical hand ; a
protection often bought at too dear a rate, and all,
to obtain leave to pass one's life between four
walls, counterfeiting the devotion which one does
not feel ! . . . Better die !
They die silently, decently, solitarily. Never
will you see them rushing into the street from their
garret, to bear about the banner with the motto,
• This is the inevitable progress of things. No one is to
blame for it. But, it is to be hoped that the very evil will
bring about its own remedy.
t Roman Catholic Religious Works.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
" Virre eii trara'dlant, ou mourir en combattant *."
They will raise no riots ; nothing need be feared
from them. . . . And it is for this very reason
that we are so much the more bound to succour
thcni. Are we to have bowels for those only who
keep us in fear ?
Ye moneyed men, if I must meet you on your
own ground of money, I tell you tliat the moment
we shall have an economical government, it will
not hesitate at extending relief to the poor of the
other sex, so as to enable them to support them-
selves, and to work f .
Not only do these sickly women crowd our hos-
pitals, alternately entering and being discharged
from them ; but the offspring of these poor ex-
hausted beings, supposing that they do not die in
the Eiifants-Troutes {the Foundling), will resemble
their mothers, and be the constant inmates of the
hospitals. A sickly woman is a whole family
of patients in perspective.
Philosophers, pliysiologists, economists, states-
men, we all know that the excellence of the race,
the strength of the people, depends upon the lot of
* (" Life ■n-orking, or death fighting;" in other words,
" Give us -nork that we may live, and we are ready and will-
ing to work ; but, if you ask us to sit down and starve, we
shall prefer falling on you, though death be the result.)
Translator.
t They who are averse to poor laws in general, and to
the state's turning manufacturer, may, nevertheless, per-
haps approve of temporary workrooms for those poor girls
who, otherwise, are condemned to prostitution. In this
very year, 1845, two young girls, half famishing, but re-
solved not to have recourse to this frightful resource,
were admitted into one of our hospitals. — The asylums
to which I allude have a model in the beguinages of
Flanders, an old, but too little known, institution, of which I
have spoken in my History of France. (See vol. ii, p. 189,
in \ATiittaker's edition.) One of the sweetest impressions
left upon me by my travels is the remembrance of the
charming beguinage of Ghent— a lovely village in the midst
of a city, its little cottaires Interspersed with little gardens.
The beguines go out of it once a week to carry home their
work. They often marry, and are preferred as wives by
the working classes. — How far might we imitate these asy-
lums; placing them under the superintendence of the magis-
trate, and securing them from ecclesiastical interference ?
r submit this question to those practical men amongst us,
who have remained men of feeling as well; and, in particu-
lar, to a very zealous and very enlightened body, the Muni-
cipal Council of Paris.— M. Faucher's Eludes sur VAnglelerre
affords many curious particulars and new views respecting
divers attempts of the kind.
woman. She who carries the child for nine
months, lias much moi-e to do with its formation
than the father. Strong mothers make the strong.
We all are, and ever shall be, debtors to women.
They are mothers ; this is to sum up every thing
in one word. One must be born in misery and in
damnation, to stand haggling about the labour of
those who constitute the wliole joy of the present
and the destiny of the future. What they make
with their hands is a vei^ secondary matter ; it is
our part to work. What do they make ? They
make us . . . and this is a superior work to ours.
To be loved, to bring forth, then, to bring forth
morally, to rear man (our barbarous age does not
well understand this), is the whole and sole business
of woman.
" Fons omnium viventium " (mother of all
living). What can be added to this grand saying ?
Whilst writing the above, I have had constantly
present to my mind a woman, whose firm and
thoughtful spirit would not have failed me in these
struggles. I lost her thirty years ago (whilst a
stripling), and, nevertheless, she accompanies me
from stage to stage of my life, and still lives for
me.
She bore my evil days, and did not live to profit
by my prosperous ones. I gave her trouble when
young, and now am not allowed to give her comfort.
.... I do not even know where her bones lie ; I
was too poor at the time to buy a burial place.
And yet I owe her much. . . . Deeply do I feel
myself the son of woman. Every moment, in my
thoughts, my words, (not to speak of manners and
features), I remind myself of my mother. The
sympathy I feel towards past ages, my tender
recollection of all those who are no more, is indeed
the blood of wom.an.
What means have I of returning, I, who am
myself advanced in years, my numberless obliga-
tions to her ? Only one, but for which she would
have thanked me — this protest on behalf of women
and of mothers.
I inscribe it here in front of a book, which is
believed, but wrongly, to be a book of controversy.
If it shall live, the more apparent will it become
with the lapse of time, that it is an historical work,
a book written in truth and sincerity of faith. . , .
What can I have more at heart ?
Easter, 1845.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The happiness of family life is at stake —
Of that asylum in which we would all fain rest
our hearts, after so many vain efforts and vanished
illusions. We come wearied home Do we
find i-est there ?
We must not dissemble the truth, but frankly
own to ourselves the real state of things. A
serious disagreement, the most serious of all dis-
agreements, is destroying the peace of families.
We can address our mothers, wives, or daughters,
on general subjects such as we talk of to strangers,
on the affaii's or news of the day, but must not
speak to them of those matters which concern the
heart and the moral conduct of life, of things
eternal, of religion, of the soul, of God.
Take the moment when you would most love
to start and enjoy a sentiment in common with
those who are dearest to you, as you rest your-
8
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
self of an evening, or at the supper-table ; and
dare to hazard a word on these things, there,
seated as you are, by your own fireside. Your
mother sadly shakes her head ; your wife contra-
dicts you ; your daughter, though she refrains
from speaking, clearly disapproves. . . . They are on
one side of the table; you on the other, and alone.
One would fancy that in the midst of them, and
right opposite to you, there sits an invisible man,
contradicting every word you say.
And wherefore should we be surprised at this
state of things in families 1 Our wives and our
daughters are brought up and governed by our
enemies.
It pains me to pronounce this word, and that
for many reasons (I will state them at the end of
the volume) ; but 1 have not devoted ray whole
life to the inquiry after truth, to sacrifice it now
to my personal feelings.
By the enemies, I say, of modern mind, the ene-
mies of liberty and of the promise of the future.
It is no use quoting this preacher or that de-
mocratic sermon ; one voice to plead for liberty,
when there are fifty thousand denouncing it. . . .
Whom can they look to deceive by so gross a
manoeuvre ?
By our enemies, I repeat, in a directer sense,
inasmuch as they are the natural enviers of mar-
riage and of family life ; though this, I am well
aware, is more their misfortune than their fault.
An old, dead system, which works mechanically,
can only seek to produce the dead ; still, life
claims her share in them, and they can only com-
fort themselves for their agony in being deprived
of domestic happiness by troubling ours.
The destruction of the system will be the ap-
parent strength which it has recently derived from
its unity, and the mad confidence with which this
has inspired it.
What, moral unity ? a real association of souls ?
By no means. In a dead body, every element, if
left to itself, would gladly disperse ; but that does
not hinder from putting a dead body into an iron
frame-work, so as to hold it more firmly than a
living body, making it into a compact mass, and
launching it forth.
The spirit of death — let us call it by its true
name, Jesuitism,— formerly neutralized by the
diverse life of orders, fraternities, and religious
parties, is the common spirit which is now being
infused into the clergy by a special education, as
the superior clergy make no scruple of confessing.
A bishop has said, " We are all Jesuits, all of us."
None have given hira the lie.
The majority, however, are less frank. Jesuitism
works powerfully through the agency of those who
are supposed to be strangers to it — through the
Sulpicians, who educate the clergy ; through the
Ignorantins, who educate the people; through the
Lazarists, the directors of six thousand Sisters of
Charity, and who are connected with the hospitals,
the schools, and vai-ious charities, &c.
So many establishments, so much money, so
many pulpits to speak aloud in, so many confes-
sionals to whisper in, the education of two hundred
thousand boys *, of six hundred thousand girls,
* There is not a single word in the present work on the
the direction of many millions of women — a grand
machine, indeed ! The unity which it now pre-
sents might, seemingly, warrant the state in taking
the alarm ; but so far from it, the state, whilst
prohibiting laymen from association, has en-
couraged it amongst the clergy, and has allowed
them to take the initiative amongst the humbler
classes in the most dangerous form, by instituting
societies of workmen, companies of apprentices,
associations of servants, — which are to render an
account to the priests, &c.
Unity of action, monopoly of association : here,
beyond a doubt, are two great levers.
Well ; with all this, strange to say, the clergy
are weak : and this will be made apparent the
instant they shall no longer be supported by the
state. In fact, it is becoming evident already.
Armed with these arms, and with the weapon
of an active press besides, which they have re-
cently acquired, and tampering underhand with
fashionable circles, with the papers, and the
Chambers, yet they have not advanced one step.
Wherefore do you not advance ? .... If you
will stop your cries and gesticulations for one
moment, I will tell you. You are many, and you
are dangerous ; you are strong in a thousand
material means — in money, credit, intrigue, in all
worldly weapons You are weak only in
God!
Do not burst forth at this. Let us reason rather;
let us endeavour, if you are men, to make out to-
gether what religion really is. Ghostly men as
you are, you apparently suppose it to consist in
material things, in holy water and incense. God
ought to be in your eyes, as in ours, the God of
the spirit, of truth, of charity.
The God of the true has revealed himself these two
last centuries, more than he did in the ten preced-
ing ages. By whom has this revelation been ac-
complished 1 Not by you, but by those whom you
style laymen, and who have been the priests of the
soul. You cannot claim as yours one of the great
discoveries, of the enduring works, which have been
reared on the road to knowledge.
The God of Charity, of equity, of humanity, has
allowed us to substitute a human for the cruel law
of the middle age. You keep up its barbarism *.
This exclusive law only suppressed contradiction
by killing the contradictor. Ours admits of dif-
ferences, and evolves harmony out of the different
tones ; it does not seek the death of our enemy,
but to convert him into a friend and give him life.
..." Save the conquered f," was the cry of
Henry IV., after the battle of Ivi'y. " Kill all,"
said Pope Pius V., to the soldiers he despatched
into France previous to the massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew X-
strange question that has been raised, to wit, — whether
those who have the daughters should have the sons as well,
whether they are to go on increasing their monstrous mono-
poly, whether France should confide her children to the sub-
jects of a foreign prince — I rely upon the good sense of the
Chambers.
• Numerous proofs are given further on.
f Not only Frenchmen but Swiss. Discours Veritable,
published in 1500 (Mem. de la Ligue, iv. 246).
I In 15C9. He complained, says the panegyrist, of his
general, " Che non avesse il commandamento di lui osser-
vato d'ammazzar subito qualunque heretico gli fosse venuto
alle mani" (Who did not observe his commands to knock
DIVISION OF THE WORK.
Your principle is the old exclusive and homici-
dal principle, which kills that which contradicts it.
You speak much of charity ; and charity is not
difficult when one takes care, as you do, to except
one's enemies from its benefits.
Why do you not recognize the God who has ap-
peared in our days in the light of the sciences, in the
amelioration of manners, in the equity of the laws?
The reason is, that you are weak in this respect,
that in this respect you are impious. Amongst all
you have, you want one thing — religion.
What constitutes the gravity of this age, nay, I
presume to say, its sanctity, is the conscientious
labour which continues without intermission to
forward the common work of mankind, and which
facilitates, at its own expense, the labour of the
future. Our ancestors have dreamed much, dis-
puted much. We are labourers ; and hence, our
furrow has been blessed. That soil which the
middle age left us all full of brambles, has, by our
efforts, produced so powerful a harvest, that it
already covers, and will soon conceal the old, inert
land-mark that thought to stop the plough.
And it is because we are labourers, because we
return home tired every evening, that we, more
than others, feel the want of a resting-place for the
heart. We want to have this home really our
home, this table ours, and not to find, instead of
rest, the old dispute which is now over both in
knowledge and in the world ; not to have our wife
or our child repeat, whilst lying beside us, the
words and lessoning of another man.
Women readily follow the strong. How comes
it, then, that they have followed the weak 1
AT ONCE ON THE HEAD whatever heretic might fall into his
hands.) Catena, Vila di Pio V. p. 85, (ed. Rome), and p. 55.
(ed. Mantua).
There must be some art which lends strength to
the weak ; and it is this darksome art, which Ih
that of surprising, fascinating, lulling, and annihi-
lating the wills which I have tracked throughout
this volume. Its theory was known in the seven-
teenth century, its practice is kept up in our own.
Usurpation does not constitute right. For all
their stealthy usurpation, the usurpers are neither
the stronger nor the better. Heart alone, and
reason, give the strong a right over the weak, not
to weaken the weak, but to render them stronger.
Modern man, the man of the future, will not
yield woman up to the man of the past. The di-
rection usurped by the latter, is, as we shall see,
a marriage, and a more powerful one than mar-
riage itself — a spiritual marriage. . . . But who
has the spirit, has everything.
Bethink ye, young man; to marry her whose soul
is another's is to marry divorce.
Things cannot go on thus. Marriage must once
again become marriage ; the husband must make
his wife his companion in his train of ideas and
progressive path onwards, more intimately than he
has hitherto done ; must bear her up if she grow
weary, and help her to keep pace with him. Man
is not innocent of what he. is now suffering, and
has himself to accuse for it. In this age of ardent
competition and impetuous research, in his impa-
tience to make further progress daily towards the
future, he has left his wife behind. He has hurried
forward, and she has receded back. . . . This must
happen no more. Come, link arms once again.
Do you not hear your child crying ? . . . You were
seeking the past and the future by two different
roads; but they are here. You will find both
together by your child's cradle.
January lOJ/t, 1845.
DIVISION OF THE WORK.
The course of Lectures delivered by me in 1844,
will soon be published, under the title of Rome and
France.
I could not treat in them of the subject of the
present volume, as being of too delicate a charac-
ter ; but only alluded to it in two or three.
It presented a serious difficulty: namely, how
to speak in becoming terms, of a matter which our
adversaries have handled with incredible freedom.
Omnia munda mundis (T(j the clean, all things are
clean), I know well. However, I have often pre-
ferred to allow them to escape, when I had them
in my grasp, to following them into the mire.
First Part. On Direction in the Serenteenth Cen-
tury.— I have selected my historical proofs from
the purest and the best of my adversaries, not
from those who afforded me the easiest handle.
The seventeenth century was that which offered
me written testimony ; being the only one which
has not shrunk fi'om bringing out into full belief
the theory of direction.
I could multiply instances ad infinitmn. Nay,
those who have read the account I give of Louis XL,
in my History of France, are aware of the value I
attach to minutiaj of detail. I quote little, but
exactly ; and with punctilious care to verify my
quotations. The falsifiers whom I detect in the
very act, at each step of my historical studies, are
brazen-faced indeed, to talk of exactness. They
may go on talking at their ease ; they will never
succeed in inducing me to parallel their names
with those of writers whose good faith is beyond
susjiicion.
Second Part. On Direction generally ; and on
Direction in the Nineteenth Centnry in jxirtladar. —
This second part has been the result of a serious
inquiry into contemporaneous facts. I have seen,
listened, questioned; have well weighed various tes-
timonies, and compared them with numerous analo-
gous facts with which I had long been acquainted.
And I have submitted both these older facts, and
the new ones gleaned in my recent inquiries, to the
judgment of that inward jury which I bear within
myself.
Third Part. On Family Life. — I have by no means
aspired to a discussion of this vast subject ; but
simply to indicate the true meaning of marriage
and of family life, and the means of restoring
10
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
that home which is now shaken by a foreign in-
fluence.
I liave thought it my duty to conchide by a few
words to my opponents, spoken without a particle
of hate. I can, indeed, say, and from my heart,
(in Language the reverse of that of the Pagan,) " O
my enemies, there is no such thing as enemies."
Should this work, severe as it may be on the priests,
eventually produce the effect at which it aims, they
are the party that it will have served ; and so have
thought many of their number who have made not
the least objection to reply to the questions I put to
them. . . . Yea ; may this book, weak as it is,
hasten the time when the priest, become man
once more, and liberated from an artificial system
(in our day equally absurd and impossible), shall
resume the laws of nature, and take his place
amongrst his fellow men !
PART THE FIRST.
ON DIRECTION* IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I.
RELIGIOUS REACTION IN ICOO. INFLUENCE OF THE
JESUITS OVKR WOMEN AND CHILDREN. — SAVOY, THE
VAUDOIS; VIOLENCE AND GENTLENESS. ST. FRANfOIS
DE SALES.
Every one has seen Guido's charming Annuncia-
tion in the gallery of the Louvre. It is defective
in drawing and faulty in colouring, and yet its
effect is irresistible. You must not look in it for
the high, severe feeling of the older schools f , nor
yet for the young, vigorous handling of the masters
of the Renaissance. The si.xteenth century had
passed away, and all had acquired a softer cha-
racter. The angel — the figure in which the painter
has evidently taken most delight, is, iu conformity
with the refining process of this jaded age, the pet
Adonis of the choir, a parish-clerk's cherub of
some sixteen years of age ; whilst the virgin is
eighteen or twenty. This virgin, without a par-
ticle of ideality, thoroughly real, and the reality
impoverished, is a young Italian lady whose likeness
Guido had taken in her own house, in her little
oratory, and at her convenient praying-desk {un
prie-Dieu commode), such as was in use among the
ladies of that period.
If the painter has been inspired by anything, it
has not been by the Gospel, but rather by the re-
ligious romances of the day, or by the fashionable
sermons preached by the Jesuits in their coquettish
churches. The Angelic Scdutation, the Visitation,
the Annunciation, were the favourite subjects on
which seraphic gallantry had long exhausted all its
imagination. You might fancy as you are looking
at this picture of Guido's that you are reading the
Bernardino. The angel is speaking Latin like a
learned young clerk, and the virgin, like a well-bred
j'oung lady, answering in her sweet Italian, " 0
alto signore," <^c.
Hence, this pretty painting maybe considered as
a characteristic work of a vicious epoch ; an agree-
able and delicate work, which, by its very agree-
ableness and delicacy, only renders its suspicious
grace and equivocal charm more apparent.
Let us call to mind the sugarisli forms affected
by the religious re-action of the period — that of
Henry IV. The lispings of that gentle little
voice strike one with astonishment when heard on
* Tliat is, " Spiritual Guidance."
t Compare the annunciations of Giusto di Alamagna, of
lAica> of Leyden, and of Vasari, all three in the Gallery of
the Louvre.
the very morrow of the sixteenth century, after so
many wai's and massacres. . . . All of a sudden,
the terrible preachers of the sixteenth, the monks
who shouldered the musket in the processions of
the League, have become humane, and are all be-
nignity. The reason is to be sought in the neces-
sity there exists for putting those to sleep they
have been unable to kill. The undertaking, too,
was not so difficult a one. The whole world, worn
out by the religious wars, was asleep. All were
tired of a struggle, which produced no result, in
which no one was victor. Every man knew his
own party, and his own friends too well. On the
evening after so long a march, there was none so
stout as not to wish for rest. Even the indefatiga-
ble Bearnese, going to sleep with the rest, or wish-
ing to put them to sleep by his example, resigned
himself with a good grace into the hands of father
Cotton and the fair Gabrielle.
Henry IV. was Louis the Fourteenth's gi-and-
father. Cotton, Father la Chaise's great uncle ;
here are two monarchies, two dynasties, one of
kings, the other of Jesuit confessors. The history
of the latter would be exceedingly interesting.
These amiable fathers reigned throughout the
whole century by dint of absolving, pardoning,
shutting their eyes, and feigning ignorance. They
reached great results by the smallest means ; by
petty capitulations, secret transactions, back doors,
and private staircases.
The Jesuits might plead that being, compul-
sorily, the restorers of the papal authority, that is
to say, physicians to a corpse, they had but little
choice of means. Irrecoverably beaten in the
world of ideas, where could they renew the war
except on the fields of intrigue, of passion, of human
weaknesses ?
There, none could serve them more actively than
women. And, when they did not act with or for
the Jesuits, they were not less useful, indirectly, as
agents and instruments, as being the medium of
daily transactions and compromises between the
penitent and the confessor.
The tactics of the confessor were not very differ-
ent from those of the mistress. With him, as with
her, the plan was occasionally to refuse, to put off,
and inflame ; to wean, but gently ; and then to be
prevailed upon through too great tenderness of
heart. . . . These little manoeuvres, wliicli wei-e
indispensable to a monarch at once gallant and
devout, and who was obliged, moreover, to confess
SAVOY AND THE VAUDOIS.
11
on stated days, often brought the whole state within
the power of the confessional. Caught and held
here, the king was compelled to make satisfaction
one way or otiier. He paid for his weaknesses as a
man by weaknesses as a politician ; this amour would
cost him a secret of state, that bastard an ordinance.
At times he would not be suffered to escape without
giving hostages ; for instance, to retain a given
mistress, he was obliged to deliver over Jiis son.
How many indulgences did not father Cotton extend
to Henry IV., in order to secure the education of
the dauphin • !
In this great enterprise, by which they sought
to secure the husband everywhere through the wife,
and the child through the mother, the Jesuits had
to encounter various obstacles ; and one, a very
serious obstacle — their reputation as Jesuits. They
were already much too well known. See how they
are described in the letters of San Carlo Borromeo,
who had settled them in Milan, and shown them
1 singular fiivour, as intriguers, firebrands, and inso-
' lent under a crmging exterior. Even their penitents,
'; who found them exceedingly accommodating, had,
i nevertheless, their fits of disgust. The simplest
i could see that folk who held that there was a pro-
] bahle side to every opinion, had no opinion at all.
These famous champions of the faith were sceptics
j in morals, and woi'se than sceptics, since speculative
I scepticism may be allied with some sentiment of
' honour : but a sceptic who carries his doubts into
' practice ; who will say Yes to this act, and Yi's to
I its exact contrary, must go on always lowering his
moral tone, and lose, not only all principle, but, in
the long run, all heart !
Their mien alone was their satire. These men,
so skilful in cloaking themselves, sweated false-
hood ; it clung visibly and palpably about them.
Their falsehood shone a hundred yards off, like
brass badly gilt, or like the holy toys of their mere-
tricious churches. Falsehood marked each expres-
sion, accent, gesture, attitude ; in all which they
them all up. Not one of them, however profoundly
learned, disdained to turn schoolmaster, to teach
grammar and parsing.
Yet were there many, even of their friends and
penitents, of those who entrusted their own souls to
them, who, nevertheless, hesitated to entrust to
them their children.
They wouM have had far less success with women
and children, had not their good fortune given them
an auxiliary in the person of a grown-up child, a good
and apt child, who had the very quality in which
they were deficient for inspiring confidence— a
cliarming simplicity.
This friend of the Jesuits, who served them all
the better from not being one of their own order,
created in his simplicity to the advantage of these
politicians, that which, without him, they might
liave attempted for ever, but in vain — the mode,
the tone, the style of comfortable devotion {de la
devotion a'lsee). The false would never enjoy the
shadow of life it manages to catch, but for a mo-
ment of truth.
Before speaking of Fran9ois de Sales, I must
say a word of the theatre on which he appeared.
The great efforts of Ultra-montane reaction,
about the year 1600, were made in the Alps, in
Switzerland, and Savoy. The work went on busily
on either acclivity of the mountains, only different
means were put in operation. They exhibited in
the two quarters two different faces— the face of an
angel and the face of a beast. The latter, the wild
beast's face, was shown to the poor Vaudois ; the
angel's was turned towards Savoy and Geneva;
since gentle measures only could be resorted to
in the case of districts guaranteed by treaties, and
which would be protected from violence by the
lances of the Swiss.
The agent of Rome in these quarters, was the
celebrated Jesuit Antonio Possevino *, — the pro-
fessor, the scholar, the politician, the confessor of
the kings of the North. He was the organizer
displayed an affected mannerism, often over-done, [ of the persecutions against the Vaudois of Pied
and constantly changing ; beguiling, indeed, by its mont ; and he instructed and tutored his pupil.
variety, but at the same time, pi'ovoking to caution.
They could assume a given attitude or deportment;
but assumed gi'aces, or manners scientifically ob-
lique, undulating, and serpentine, are anything but
calculated to inspire confidence. They Liboured to
seem simple, humble, poor, worthy folk, but the
grimace of the actor betrayed them.
These equivocal-looking persons had, however,
one merit in woman's eyes which redeemed all —
they doted on children. No mother, grandmother,
or nurse could flatter them more, or be readier at
amusing and soothing them. We often find in their
churches the favourite saints of the Society — St.
Xavier or St. Ignatius — painted as comical-looking
nurses, holding the divine poppet -j- in their arms,
and rocking and kissing him. It was upon their
altars, too, in their tricked out chapels, that were
first exhibited those little paradises in glass cases,
in which women delight to see tlie waxen infant
couched on flowers. So dearly did the Jesuits love
children, that they would willingly have brought
• His master stroke was to get the most frivolous man in
France, the shepherd poet Des Yveteaux, nominated precep-
tor, reserving the moral and religious education of the prince
to himself.
f The word found in every page of St. Franfois de Sales
and of the other.writers of the period.
Fran9ois de Sales, how to win over by address
the Protestants of Savoy.
Shall I speak of this fearful history of the Vau-
dois, or hold my tongue ? To speak of it were too
cruel a task ; no one can tell it without the pen
hesitating, and the ink, as he writes, being blanched
with tears f ! Still, if I pass it over in total silence,
the reader will be left in the dark as to the most
odious part of the system, the artful policy which
hispired the employment of directly opposite means
in one and the same question — here ferocity,
there unwonted mildness. One word, and I shall
have done with tlie hateful theme. The cruellest
executioners were women, the penitents of the
Jesuits of Turin ; the victims were children ! In
the sixteenth century, they were destroyed — four
hundred children were burned to death at once in
a cavern ; in the seventeenth, they were kidnapped.
* See his life by Dorigny, p. 505 ; Bonneville, Vie de
Saint Francois, p. 19, &-c.
t Read the trilogy of the great historians of the Vaudois
— Gilles, Leger, Arnaiid, (1644, 1669, ino), and have by yo'j
the valuable map and admirable description of the country
contained in tlie first volume of M. Muston's History.
Little did I think, when I welcomed this son of martyrs to
my house, that a work full of moderation, forgetfulness, and
of forgiveness would cost hira his country.
12
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
The edict of pacification, granted to the Vaudois in
1655, sets forth as an especial favour, that their
children shall not be taken from them under twelve
years of age ; above that age it is lawful to take
them *.
This new mode of persecution, more cruel than
the preceding massacres, characterizes the epoch
when the Jesuits undertook to get into their own
hands the education of children universally. The
pitiless plagiariif, who forced them from their
mothers, sought nothing more or less than to bring
them up after their own fashion, to make them
abjure their faith, and hate their family, and to
arm them against their own kindred.
It was, as I have said, a Jesuit professor, Posse-
vino, who renewed the persecution about the time
I am now speaking of. Whilst teaching at Padua,
he had the young Fran9ois de Sales for pupil, who
had already passed a year at Paris, in the College
de Clermont %. He was descended of one of those
very militant and very devout families of Savoy,
who have so long made war on Geneva. He had
every weapon at his command for the war of se-
duction, which it was desired to begin — tender and
sincere devotion, warm and lively eloquence, and a
singular charm of goodness, beauty, and accom-
plished manners. Who has not felt this charm in
the smile of the young Savoyards, simple beings,
but so wary ?
One cannot but believe that Heaven had rained
all its grace upon him, since, despite of this evil
age, this evil taste, this evil resolution, and the de-
signing and false society which called him into
action, he nevertheless remained St. Francois de
Sales. All he said or wrote, though not utterly
irreproachable, is delightful, full of heart, and
marked by the original grace of a child of genius,
who, whilst he made you smile, touched and af-
fected you. Livmg springs gush around, flowers
spring after flowers, and little rivulets flow, as after
a shower of a lovely spring morning. It may,
perhaps, be objected, that he is so full of flowery
flourishes, that his posy is no longer a shepher-
dess's, but a flower-girl's, as his Philothea would
say. He takes all, he takes too many ; and, in the
abundance, the colours are often badly contrasted,
and have a whimsical eff'ect. This, it must be owned,
was the taste of the time. The Savoyard taste, in
particular, does not shrink from the ugly ; a Jesuit
education does not teach hatred of the false.
But though he had not been so charming a
writer, his singular personal attractions would not
have exercised less influence. His sweet, fair
countenance, which was al^-ays somewhat infantile.
• The edict enacts that no Vaudois is to be forced to turn
Catholic :— " Ne'i figliuoli potranno esser toiti alii loro paren-
ti, mentre che sono in etil minora, cioe li maschi di dodici, e
le femine di dieci anni (Nor shall children be taken from
their parents whilst in the infant state, that is to say, boys
under twelve and girls under ten years of age).
t Plagiarius signifies strictly speaking a man-stealer.
t The fine portrait drawn by Sainte-Beuve, and which
every body has read, allows me to omit a number of details ;
only, I have thought it necessary to point out precisely the
Influence which the Jesuits exercised over the saint and
the manner in which they made use of him. See his various
biographies — those of the Capuchin Bonneville, the Bernardin
Jean de Saint-Franfois, the Minim La Riviere, the Jesuit
Talon, Longueterre, the bishop Maupas du Tour, and,
above all, the saint's own let;,ers. The edition of 1833 has
been constantly before me.
won tlie heart at the first look ; and babies in their
nurses' arms, could not take their eyes off him.
He, too, loved them dearly, and would stroke their
little heads, and exclaim, " Here is my little fa-
mily, here is my little family." The children ran
after him, and the mothei'S followed the children.
Little family — little trickery* — the one, at times
is like the other. A child outwardly, the good
man at bottom was very deep. If he indulges the
nuns in this or that little falsehood f, can we suppose
that he never allowed the same indulgence to him-
self ? However this may be, the real falsehood
was less in his words than in his position. He was
made bishop, to set the example of immolating the
rights of the bishops to the pope. Through love of
peace, and to cover the divisions of the Catholics by
a seeming union, he did the Jesuits the essential
service of saving their Molina when he was accused
at Rome, and prevailed on the pope to impose si-
lence on the friends and on the enemies of grace.
Yet this man, naturally so mild, did not confine
himself to gentle and persuasive measures. In
his zeal for conversion, he employed less honour-
able means — interest, money, place, and finally,
the strong arm of power, and of fear. He led the
duke of Savoy from village to village, and coun-
selled him to expel the last who refused to abjui'e
their faith J, from his dominions. Money, a power-
ful agent in so poor a country, seemed to him so
natural and irresistible a means, that he even went
to Geneva to try to buy over the aged Theodore
Beza, and offered him, from the pope, a pension of
four thousand crowns a-year.
It was a sight to see him, bishop and titular prince
of Geneva, manoeuvring against his own town,
laying siege to it, and organizing against it, through
France and Savoy, a war of seduction. Money
and intrigue were not enough ; a gentler charm
was wanted to soften and melt that inaccessible
glacier of logic and criticism. Nunneries were
founded to attract and receive the neic conreHites, to
hold out to them a powerful bait of love and mys-
ticism ; nunneries on which the names of Ma-
dame de Chantal, and of Madame Guyon have con-
ferred celebrity. The first originated the melting
devotions of the Visitation ; the second wrote there
her little book, the Torrents, which seems as in-
sfiired by the Charmettes, Meillerie, and Clai-ens,
as Rousseau's Julia, and the latter is assuredly the
less dangerous of the two.
CHAPTER II.
ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES AND MADAME DE CHANTAL.
THE VISITATION. — RESULTS OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION.
Saint Francois de Sales was exceedingly popular
in France, and especially in the Burgundies, which,
ever since the days of the League, had preserved
a powerful leaven of religious passions. The
parliament of Dijon invited him to come and
* (The author plays here on the words mhiage, "family,"
and manege, " the art of the riding school.") Translator.
t Little lies, little stratagems, little subterfuges. See,
for instance. (Euvres, t. viii., p. 190, 223, 3'12.
t Noiwelles Lettres Inediies, published by M. Datta, (1835)
t. i. p. 247. See, also, as regards the saint's intolerance, p.
130, 131, 136, 141 ; and p. 335, t. ix. of the (Euvres, where he
lays it down as the bonnden duty of kings to visit with the
sword all the enemies of the pope.
MADAME DE CHANTAL.
13
preach there. He was domiciUated in the house
of his friend, Andre' Fremiot, who, from bein>i a
counsellor to the parliament, had become arch-
bishop of Bourges. The son of a highly esteemed
president of the parliament of Dijon, he was
Madame de Chantal's brother, and, consequently,
grand uncle to Madame de Sevign^, the latter's
grand daughter*.
In order to heighten their meeting into the ro-
mantic and marvellous, the biographers of the
saint suppose, most improbably, that they did not
know, and had scarcely heard speak of each
other, and had only met in visions and dreams.
At the Lent sermon preached by the saint at
Dijon, he noticed her amongst all the other ladies,
and, on leaving the pulpit, " Who," he said, " is
that young widow who listened so attentively to
the word of God ?" " My sister," was the arch-
bishop's reply, " the baroness de Chantal."
She was at this time (a.d. 1G04) thirty-two years
of age ; Saint Franfois was thirty-seven : con-
sequently, she was born in 1572, the year of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew. She had in her
character, from her birth, a something austere,
but impassioned and violent. When only six years
old, a Huguenot gentleman happening to give her
some sugar-plums, she flung them into the fire, say-
ing : " Sir, that is how hei-etics will bui-n in hell, be-
cause they do not believe what our Lord has said.
If you were to give the king the lie, my father
would hang you up ; what should be done with you,
then, when you give our Lord so repeatedly the lie ?"
With all her devotion and enthusiasm, she was
a clear-headed woman. She managed her hus-
band's house and fortune exceedingly well; and
superintended with great prudence those of her
father and her father-in-law. She lived with the
latter ; as otherwise he would not have left his
property to her young children.
It is enchanting to read the lively and charming
letters, by which the saint opens his correspon-
dence with " his dear sister," "his dear daughter."
Nothing can be purer, chaster, but also — and
wherefore should we not say it — nothing more
ardent. It is curious to observe the innocent art,
the caresses, the tender and ingenious flatteries with
which he encircles the two families of'Fre'miot and
Chantal — first, the father, the good president Fre-
miot, who, seated in his easy arm-chair, in his
library, begins to take to the reading of godly
books, and to think of his latter end ; then the
brother, the ex -councillor, the ai'chbishop of Bour-
ges, for whose express use he writes a little treatise
on the manner of preaching ; nor does he by any
means neglect the father-in-law, the rough old
Baron de Chantal, a relic of the wars of the League,
who is the cross of his daughter-in-law. But of all,
the children are those to whom he pays his court
best ; he overflows with innumerable tendernesses
and pious caresses, such as even a woman's, a
mother's heart, could hardly suggest. He prays
for them, and desires these little ones to remember
him in their prayers.
One person alone of the household is difficult to
tame, M. de Chantal's confessor. You may learn
from this struggle betwixt the director and the
confessor, how much address, skilful management,
* See the biographers of Madame de Chantal (the Jesuit
Fichet, bishop Maupas), and, above all, her letters, which
are unfortunately incomplete; 3 vols, in 12mo, 175,'i.
and cunning may co-exiat with an ardent will. The
confessor was a devout but limited personage, of
little mind and little practices. The saint will be
his friend; and submits, preliminarily, to his lights
the counsels he would suggest to the lady. At the
same time, he skilfully quiets Madame de Chantal,
who was not without scruples as to her spiritual
infidelity, and who, feeling herself on so easy a
descent, feared she had left the rude path of sal-
vation. He humours this scruple, the better to
remove it. Should she avow it to the confessor I
He adroitly gives her to miderstand that she may
dispense witli so doing.
At last, he declares as a true victor who has
nothing to fear, that, very different from the con-
fessor, who is uneasy, peevish, jealous, and wishes
to be the only one obeyed, he, for his part, binds
her to nothing, and leaves her altogether free.
The only bonds in which he would bind her are
those of Christian friendship, whose bonds are
called by St. Paul the bonds of perfeetness. All
other bonds are temporal, even that of obedience ;
but that of charity waxes stronger with time, and
is exempt from the scythe of death. Lore is strong
as death, says the Song of Songs. He tells her at
another time, with infinite simplicity and elevation:
— " I will not add a hair's breadth to the truth ;
I speak before the God of my heart and yours ;
each aff"ection has its peculiar distinction from
other aflfections ; that which I bear you has a
certain particularity which gives me infinite com-
fort, and which, to tell you all, is extremely profitable
to me. / did not mean to say so much, but one
word leads to another; and, besides, I know that
you will give it the proper interpretation." (Oc-
tober 14th, 1604.)
From this moment, as she is ever present to
him, he not only associates her with his religious
meditations, but, astonishing to say, with his
ceremonial duties as priest. He usually writes to
her before or after mass ; and it is of her and of
her children that he thinks at the communion table.
They do penance on the same days, and take the
communion together, although separated ; he offers
her to God, when he offers Him his Son *.
This singular man, whose serenity was not for
a moment disturbed by an intimacy of the kind,
could not but soon perceive that Madame de
Chantal's mind was far from being equally at ease.
Her feelings were strong, her heart profoundly
sensitive. The people, that is, the bourgeoisie, and
the serious families connected with the bar {families
de robe), from whom she sprung, brought into the
world a ruder, but sincerer and more genuine spirit
than the elegant and noble families, that, by the six-
teenth century, were effete. The late comers were
fresh ; and you meet them, ardent and earnest,
everywhere, — in letters, in war, in religion ; and it
is to them the seventeenth century owes whatever
it exhibits of grave and holy. Though a saint,
Madame de Chantal had, nevertheless, within her
an abyss of unknown passions.
It was hardly two months after their parting
that she wrote to him she wanted to see him
again. And they did, indeed, meet half-way, at
* " I offer up you, and your widow's heart, and your chil-
dren, every day to our Lord when I offer up to Him his
Son " (Nov. 1st, 1(!05.) " The Lord knows that I have not
taken the sacrament without you, since I left your town."
(Nov. 24th, 1604.) (Euvres, t. viii. p. 311, 272, &c.
J
14
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
the celebrated pilgrimage of Sainte-Claude, in
Franche-Comte. Here she was happy; here she
poured forth all her heart, confessed to him for
the first time, and pledged in his hands the vow
so sweet to deposit in loved hands, the vow of
obedience.
Before six weeks are over she writes to him
that she wants to see him again. It is no longer
storms that she has to face, but temptations ; she
is surrounded by darkness, by doubts, even as to
faith ; she has no longer power even to will ; she
would. fain fly, but, alas! has no wings ! . . . Still,
in the midst of these depressing and momentous
subjects, this grave person will trifle like a child,
and begs the saint no more to call her Madame,
but Shter, Dainjhter, as he used sometimes to do.
At another' time, the melancholy truth falls
from her per. — " There is a something within me,
which lias never been satisfied." (November 21st,
1604.)
The conduct of the saint mei-its observation.
Quick and shrewd as he is at other times, he persists
in only half understanding now. Far from enticing
Madame de Chantal to embrace that religious
vocation which would have put her wholly in his
power, he endeavours to confirm her in her post
as mother and as daughter, and to keep her with
her children and the two aged men, to whom she is
a mother as well. He occupies her mind with her
duties, her business, the debts she has to pay off,
and will have no reflection or reasoning about her
doubts. She may read good books at times, and
he recommends to her some sorry mystical tracts.
If the she-ass recalcitrate {si Vanesse re<jimbe), his
expression for the flesh and sensual feelings,
she must be tickled {flatter) with a few strokes of
the scourge.
He seems to have been thoroughly sensible at
this period of the inconveniences that may follow
the proximity of two persons so much attached to
one another, and prudently replies to Madame de
Cliantal's prayer :— " I am bound here hand and
foot ; and, besides, my kind sister, are you not de-
terred by the disagreeables of the last journey ?"
He is writing in October, on the eve of the rough
weather usually experienced in the Jura and the
Alps, iind adds, " We will see between this and
Easter."
About that time she visited liim at his mother's ;
but, feeUng her loneliness on her return to Dijon,
she fell ill. He was taken up with controversy,
and appeared to neglect her. His letters become
fewer and fewer. No doubt, he felt the necessity
of putting on the drag down this rapid road. As
for her, she passes the whole of this year (1005)
violently agitated between temptations and doubts;
until at length she becomes undecided whether to
bury herself in a Carmelite nuimery, or marry again.
A great religious movement was taking place at
this time in France, a movement far from sponta-
neous, long premeditated, and highly artificial, but
leading, nevertheless, to vast results. It was for-
warded, either through zeal or vanity, by the rich
and powerful families of the long robe and the
money market. By the side of the Oratory,
founded by the cardinal de Berulle, a singularly
active and ardent-minded woman, a saint engrossed
by the devout intriguings of the day— Madame
Acarie (the blessed Mary of the Incarnation) set-
tled the Carmelites in France, and the Ui'sulines
at Paris. Madame de Cliantal's natural austerity
of character inclined her to the Carmelites, and she
even consulted one of their superiors, a doctor of
the Sorbonne *. St. Francois de Sales perceived
the danger, and held out no longer. From that
moment he humoured her ; and, in a charming
letter, he begs her, in his mother's name, to take
upon herself the education of his young sister.
No sooner, apparently', did she receive this dear
pledge, than she became a little more tranquil ; but
she did not keep it long. This child, so beloved
and so tenderly cherished, expired in her house, in
her arms. In tne wildness of her grief, she can-
not conceal from the saint that she had prayed God
that she might die herself rather, nay, that she had
gone so far as to beseech Him to take one of her
own children instead !
This occurred in November, 1607. It is about
three months afterwards that we find in the letters
of the saint the first idea of bringing near him one
so fully tried, and whom, besides, he considerered
an instrument in God's designs.
The extreme impetuousness (I was near saying
violence,) with which Madame de Chantal broke off
from all her worldly ties, to give herself up to an
impulse so cautiously imparted, shows but too
clearly the passions which dwelt in that fiery heart.
She had great difficulty in quitting the two aged
men — her father and her father-in-law, and her
son too, who is said to have slept on the threshold
of the door to hinder her from leaving. The good
old M. Fre'miot was not so much gained over by
his daughter as by the letters of the saint, whose
interference she requested. The resigned letter,
in which he gives his consent, resigned, but all
bathed with tears, is still extant ; but his re-
signation does not seem to have been of long con-
tinuance. He died a year afterwards.
After having thus passed over the bodies of her
son and her father, she arrives at Annecey . . .
What will become of her, if the saint does not
find an aliment to feed this powerful flame which
he had lighted up m(n-e than he had wished ?
The day after Whitsunday, he summons her
after mass : — " Well, my daughter, I h.ave made
up my mind what to do with you." "And I have
made up mine to obey ;" and she threw her-
self upon her knees. " You must enter Sainte
Claire." " I am ready." " No ; you are not strong
enough : you must be a sister in the Hopital de
Beaune." " Whatever you choose." " That is not
what I mean exactly; you must be a Carmelite."
So he went on to try her in many ways, and found
her equally obedient. "Well," he said, " nothing
of the sort; God calls you to the Visitation."
There was none of the austerity of the ancient
orders in the Visitation. Its founder himself de-
clared that it was almost no relitjion at all. There
wei'e no painful observances, no vigils, few fasts, a
short service, short prayers, no shutting up in the
cloister (that is, in the beginning) ; the sisters,
whilst waiting for the spirit of the divine Bridegroom,
went to visit him in his poor, in his sick, wlio are
his living members. Nothing could have been bet-
ter calculated to calm the storms of the soul than
these combinations of active charity. Madame de
Chantal, an excellent mother of a family, and pru-
• Compare Saint Franfois, CEuvres, viii., 336, April 1606,
and Tabaraud, Vie de Berulle, i. 57, 58, 95, 141.
THE VISITATION.
15
dent housekeeper, felt happy in finding an employ-
ment in the bosom of mystic life, for her worldly
and economical abilities, in devoting herself to the
laborious details connected with the establishment
of a great order, and in travelling under such be-
loved direction, from foundation to foundation.
Here was a double trait of wisdom in the saint ; he
kept her occupied, and at a distance.
With aU this prudence, however, it must be ac-
knowledged that the happiness of conjointly for-
warding the same object, of establishing founda-
tions together, and so creating together, strength-
ened still more this strong attachment. It is
curious to notice how they tighten the bond whilst
trying to loosen it — touching contradiction : at the
only time he is enjoining her to wean herself from
him who icas Iter nurse, he pr<jniises tJiat this nurse
sluxll nererfall her. On the day he lost his mother,
he addresses her in these strong terms : — " It is
to you that I am speaking, to you, I say, to whom I
have given the place this mother held in my re-
collection when commemorating the mass, without
removing you from that which you had ; for this I
could not do, so firm a position do you take up in
my heart ; and, consequently, you are in it both first
and last !''
A stronger declaration certainly never burst
from the henrt on a more solemn day. How burn-
ingly must it have entered a soul already on the
rack of passion ! . . . One cannot be astonished at
finding her writing after this. ..." Pray to God
that 1 may not survive you !" Must he not see that
he is evex'y moment inflicting a wound, and curing
only to wound again
The nuns of the Visitation, who have published
some of the letters of their foundress *, have pru-
dently suppressed many, which they themselves say,
" are only fit to be locked up in the cabinet of
chanty 1" Enough remains to show the profound
wound which she bore with her to the tomb ■}-.
As the Visitation was soon prohibited from exer-
cising the active charity at first allowed it, and was
unsustained by the intellectual culture which had
been the life of the Paraclete and of the other con-
vents of the middle age, nothing, apparently, was
left for it but mystic asceticism. However,
the moderation of the founder, in conformity with
the lukewarmness of the time, had banished from
the new institution the austerity of the ancient
orders, and those cruel practices which killed the
senses by killing the body as well. . . . There re-
mained then neither activity, nor study, nor aus-
terity. Two things showed themselves out of this
• I have read nothing in any language, more impassioned,
more earnestly argued, more simple, and yet more subtle, than
a letter of Madame de Chantal's, On Desire, and the suffer-
ings of Self-denial. It clearly proceeds from a soul striving
to root out its dearest afFectiuns. That this letter should
have been spared by the Visilandines (the nuns of the Visi-
tation), was owing, no doubt, to its obscurity. Lettres de
Madame de Chantal, t. i., p. 27, 30. — Compare another of
her letters, pulilished in the OJuvres de Saint Franfois, t.
X., p. 139, August, 1619.
t Twenty years after the death of St. Francis, the very
year of her own death, whilst already revered as a saint,
she writes some letters to the severe abbot of St. Cyran, at
the time a prisoner in Vincennes, and it is to discourse with
him still of the dear recollection. See, Lettres Chrestiennes
et Spirituelles du Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, Abbe de
Saint-Cyran, (1645.) in 4to, t. 1. p. 53—86. The abbot, the
austerest of men, seems for a moment touched and softened.
void from the commencement : on the one hand,
littleness of mind, a taste for trifling observances
and fanatic devotional practices ; thus Madame de
Chantal tatooed her bosom with the name of Jesus
— on the other hand, an unbounded, unmeasured,
ill-regulated attachment to the director.
In all that regards St. Fran9(iis de Sales, the
saint shows herself exceedingly weak. After his
death she raves, and allows herself to be mastered
by dreams and visions. At church, she believes
that she recognizes the dear presence by heavenly
odours, of which she alone is sensible. She pre-
sents at his tomb, a little book containing all he had
said or written on the Visitation, " beseeching him
to be pleased to erase whatever it might contain
contrary to his sentiments."
In 1631, ten years after the death of St. Fran9ois
de Sales, his tomb was solemnly opened ; when his
body was found entire. " It was laid out in the
sacristy of the monastery, where, about nine in the
evening, when the visiters had retired, she led her
community in procession, and knelt in prayer by
the side of the body in an ecstasy of lore and humility.
As it was forbidden to touch the sacred corpse, she
performed a signal act of obedience in abstaining
from kissing his hand. The next morning, hav-
ing obtained permission, she was stooping down to
lift the hand of the blest one, so as to place it
on her head, when, as if he had been living, he
extended it and embraced her with a tender and
paternal caress — and she was livelily conscious of
this supernatural movement. The veil which she
wore on this occasion is preserved to this day as a
double relic."
Others may be reluctant to apply the true name
to this respectable sentiment, and be stayed by a
false reserve ; they may call it filial or sisterly
love. For my own part I shall simply give it a
name, which I believe to be a sacred one, and shall
call it — love.
We must believe the saint himself, who declares
that this sentiment was of powerful aid to his
spiritual progress. However, this is not enough ;
our business is to see what was its efi'ect on
Madame de Chantal.
The whole doctrine to be extracted from the
writings of St, Fran9()is, in the midst of many ex-
cellent practical counsels, might be summed up in
the words — Lore, Wait.
Wait for the visitation of the divine Bridegroom.
Far from counselling action, or the wi.sh to act,
he is so fearful of movement, as to reject the
phrase — union with Gud, because it may iniply a
movement towards eft'ecting it. He would sub-
stitute unity. It is incumbent to remain in
amorous indifference. " I wish little," he says ;
" and what 1 do wi.sh, I wish very feebly. I have
scarcely any desires ; but were I to be born again,
I would have none at all. If God came to me, I
would also go to liim. // he would not come to me,
I would stay where I was, and would not go to him."
This absence of desires extended even to the
desire of virtue — the extreme limit at which the
saint appears to have arrived shortly before his
death. He writes, on Aug. 10th, 16l!J,— " Tell me
that you renounce all virtues, desiring them only
in proportion as God shall vouchsafe them to you,
and nut wishing to take any care to acquire tliem,
except as his goodness may lead Him so to employ
you according to His good pleasure."
16
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
If personal will be thus mortified, what is to take
its place ? Seemingly, God's will. . . . Only, let
us not forget that if this miracle is wrought, the
result will be a state of unalterable peace, of im-
mutable strength ; and that we can recognize it
by this sign and by no other.
But we learn from Madame de Chantal herself,
that the effect was precisely the reverse ; and,
skilfully as her biography has been arranged and
letters mutilated, sufficient is left to show in what
a storm of passion she passed her days. Her
whole life, a long life, wholly devoted to active
cares, to the foundation and administration of
religious houses, has no power to calm her. Time
only consumes and destroys her, without amelio-
rating her inward martyrdom, until she ends with
making this confession in her latter days, — " All
the pains that I have suffered during the whole of
my life, are not to be compared to the torments
which I now endure, being reduced to such extre-
mity of suffering, that nothing can content me, or
give me any comfort, but the one word — death. . . "
I did not need to have her tell me so ; I should
have divined it without her. The infallible result
of the exclusive culture of the sensibility, whatever
virtues it may be ennobled by, is to disturb the
soul, and render it weak and moi'bid in the highest
degree. The will, in which consists the strength
of man, and reason, which constitutes his peace, are
not to be wholly absorbed by love with impunity.
Elsewhere *, I have spoken of the rare but
eminently beautiful examples furnished by the
middle age in its learned nuns, in whom knowledge
and piety went hand in hand. They who formed
them to this did not, it seems, fear to develop in
them both the reason and the will. Knowledge is
said to render the soul dissatisfied and over-curious,
and to keep us removed from God. ... As if there
were any knowledge but what centered in Him ; as
if the divine light, reflected in knowledge, did not
exercise a serene virtue, and a power to calm the
heart, communicating to it the peace of the eternal
truths and indestructible laws which will remain
when the world shall have run its course.
Whom or what am I accusing in all this ? Man ?
God forbid ! His metliod only.
This method, which has been called Quietism
when reduced to a system, and which, as we shall
presently see, is that of devout direction f in general,
is nothing else than the development of our pas-
siveness, of our instincts of inertia. Its final result
is the paralysis of the will, the annihilation of that
which constitutes the essence of man's being.
St. Francois de Sales, apparently, was one of
those best able to preserve life in the midst of a
system of death ; and yet the system was, never-
theless, introduced at this period by him, upright
and pure as he was. It was he who opened to the
seventeenth century the door of passive means.
We are in the dawn of the centux-y, amidst the
morning freshness of the breeze that blows from
the Alps, and yet here is Madame de Chantal faint-
ing and scarcely able to breathe. . . . What will it
be in the evening ?
* In a fragment on the Education of Women in the mid-
dle age, republished at the end of my Intt oduction a I'His-
ioire Universelle, third edition (1S44).
+ So inherent in Devout Direction, tliat you meet with it
even in the opponents of Quietism, See Bossuet's letters to
the nuns under his direction.
The worthy saint, in a charming letter, pictures
himself as one day on the lake of Geneva, " in a
small bark," guided by Providence, all obedience
" to the steersman, who forbids the slightest move-
ment, and delighted to find himself borne up by a
plank of three finger's breath only." The world is
embarked with him, and under such sweet guid-
ance, he sails amidst the rocks. These deep waters,
as you will see further on, are those of Quietism ;
and, if your eye is keen, in the transparent abyss
you may already detect Molinos *.
CHAPTER III.
LONELINESS OF WOMAN. — COMrORTABLE DEVOTION. —
MUNDANE THEOLOGY OF THE JESUITS AND OF HOME. —
WOMEN AND CHILDREN USED AS INSTRUMENTS. — THE
THIRTY years' WAR, 1618 — 1648. — GALLANT DEVOTION.
DEVOUT ROMANCES. CASUISTS.
As yet we have spoken of a rare exception, of a
woman whose life was occupied by works, doubly
occupied — as saint and foundress, but, before that,
as a wife, a mother of a family, a prudent mistress
of a house. Madame de Chantal's biographers
dwell on the fact as remarkable, that both as wife
and widow, she managed her own house, family,
and dependents, and looked after her father's pro-
perty, as well as that of her husband and children.
These are qualities becoming rare at that period.
The taste for housewifery and domestic cares, which
we find to be common in the sixteenth century,
particularly among the legal families, and those of
bourgeoisie, is much abated in the seventeenth.
Every one aspires to live after the fashion of the
nobility. A life of "idlesse" is the taste of this
period ; a taste, likewise, the result of circum-
stances. The day after the religious wars, the
whole of the community is left without employ-
ment. All local action is at an end ; and central
life, that of the court, is hardly begun. The
nobles have closed their adventures, and hung
their swords on the wall. The bourgeois has no
longer anything to occupy him ; no more plots,
revolts, or armed processions. The weariness of
this want of occupation will weigh on woman most
heavily of all ; she will find herself at once unoc-
cupied and isolated. In the sixteenth century, she
was brought into contact with man by the great
questions which were debated, even in the bosom
of families, by common dangers, fears, and hopes.
By the seventeenth century, all this excitement had
disappeared.
There must also be taken into the account
another serious point, which, it is to be feared, will
become still more serious hereafter ; namely, that
the subdivisions introduced into each calling ne-
cessitate a minuteness of detail and closeness of
attention which so absoi-b man's mind, that he is
isolated in the midst of his family, and rendered,
• The principle is the same in St. Franfois de Sales and
all the Quietists, whatever the difference in their practice;
and this is the anni/iilalion of the will as the ideal of per-
fection. St. Francis does not recommend annihilation as
the habitual state of the soul ; others desire this state, which
is that of perfection, to become habitual, if possible (Fene-
lon), or even perpetual (Molinos). See further on. — Bossuet
discovers some passages in St. Francis contrary to his general
doctrine ; but they only prove the saint not to be perfectly
consistent.
WORLDLY THEOLOGY OF THE JESUITS.
17
as it were, mute, as regards his wife and children.
He no longer communicates his thoughts to them
from day to day; and they cannot enter into the
difficult questions, and numerous technicalities, that
engross his thoughts.
But, at any rate, the wife has her children to
comfort her ? No ; at the period in question the
house, silent and empty, is no longer enlivened with
the sound of children. Education at liome becomes
an exception ; daily giving way to collective edu-
cation. The son is brought up in the Jesuit semi-
nary ; the daughter in the Ursuline or some otlier
convent. The mother is left alone.
Henceforth, mother and son are separated ! An
eminent evil, this, wliich contains the germ of a
thousand family evils ! . . . This is a subject
to which I shall return.
Not only separated ; but, as the consequence of
a totally opposite kind of life, they will become
more and more dissimilar in mind, and less and
less able to understand each other — the child, a
little pedant in us *,- the mother, ignorant and
worldly : they have no longer a language in com-
mon.
Thus dissolved, families will be much more ex-
posed to external influences. Mother and child,
once separated, are the more easily caught : only
different means are employed to this end. The
child is tamed and broken down by the oppressive
nature of his studies ; he is forced to write and
write, to copy and copy : at furthest, to translate
and imitate. The mother, on the contrary, is over-
come by the very vacuity and weariness to which
she is restricted. The lady of the castle is alone in
the castle ; the husband is engaged in the chase
or at court. Madame, the president's lady, is alone
in her mansion ; her husband repairs in the morn-
ing to the law-courts and returns in the evening.
A dismal mansion this, in the Marais or the city — a
large, grey house, in a black and narrow street.
In the sixteenth century, the lady beguiled her
idle hours by singing ; often by writing songs.
In the seventeenth, worldly songs were interdicted ;
and as to religious songs, she must be much more
on her guard against them. To sing a psalm
would be to make confession of Protestantism !
What is left for her then ? Nothing but gallant
devotion, the conversation of her director or her
lover.
The sixteenth century, with its violent fits of
morality and shifting ideas, jumped abruptly from
gallantry to devotion, from God to the devil : it
oscillated between pleasure and penance. By
the seventeenth, men are much more skilful.
Thanks to the progress of equivocation, the two
things can walk hand m hand, the two languages
are confounded, and love and devotion can be
carried on at one and the same time. Listen,
an invisible witness, to the conversation of the
fashionable coteries, and you will not always be
able to distinguish the voice of the director from
that of the lover.
To account for the singular success of the
director, we must not forget the moral position
of the time, the uneasy and perplexed state of
conscience which every one was conscious of, as
soon as the passions called into action by the re-
• (Or, as we should say in his hie, hac, hoc, that is, in his
Latin Grammar.) Translator.
ligious wars were lulled. In the gloomy leisure
to which men were left, and amidst the vacuity of
the passing day, the past rose up in living guise,
and the memory became the more importunate ;
so that in the generality of minds, especially in
the weak and stormy mind of woman, the terrible
question of salvation or damnation became the
absorbing idea.
The whole success of the Jesuits, and confidence
reposed in them by the great, and by ladies of
rank, hung by the adroitness of the reply which
they could return to this question. A word, there-
fore, on this point is indispensable.
Who can save us? ... . The theologian, on
the one hand, on the other the jurist or the philo-
sopher, will reply very differently.
The theologian, if truly such, gives the greatest
share to Christianity, and replies : — " Christ's
grace stands us instead of justice*, and saves
whom it wishes. Some are predestined to salva-
tion ; the greater number to damnation."
On the contrary, the jurist replies, that we are
punished or rewarded according to the good or
evil use we freely make of our will ; we are paid,
according to justice, in conformity with our works.
Here is the never-ending dispute betwixt the
jurist and the theologian, betwixt justice and pre-
destination.
To have a better idea of the opposition of the two
principles, imagine a mountain suddenly shelving
off on either side, its crest narrow and sharp as a
razor's edge. On the one side, is predestination,
which damns ; on the other, justice, which strikes
, . . . a fearful dilemma. ... On the summit, poor
man, with one foot on one side, the other on the
other, constantly about to slip down.
And when was the fear of falling (or slipping),
ever greater than after those great crimes of the
sixteenth century ? When did men find themselves
so top-heavy, so ready to lose their footing ? We
all know of the terrors of Charles IX. after the
massacre of St. Bartholomew: he died for want of
a'Jesuit confessor. John III., of Sweden, who mur-
dered his brother, did not die; his wife took care to
call in the good father Possevino, who whitened him,
and made a Catholic of him.
The means employed by the Jesuits to tran-
quillize consciences are at first sight calculated to
surprise + . They adopted, artfully and with limita-
tion, but still they adopted the principle of the
Jurists, namely, that man is sated or lost by his icorks,
by the use he makes of his free icilL
A liberal but severe doctrine, it would seem.
You are free, and, therefore, responsible, punish-
able ; you sin and you expiate.
The Jurisconsult, who does not trifle, requires
here a serious expiation, falling on the person of
the guilty, — " Let him lay down his head," he says ;
" the sword of the law will purge him of the disease
of iniquity."
It is better to apply to the Jesuit ; we shall get
off more cheaply J. With him expiation bears no
* This, with differences of degree, is the common answer
of the champions of grace, whether Protestants, Janseiiists,
Thomists, &c. — Put into the opposite scale all the shades of
the opposite parly, the juris-coiisults of antiquity and the
middle age, the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heretics, the
modern philosophers.
t This is the eclectic attempt of Molina: Concordia, &c.
t Analogous in theory, they differ in practice. The Jurist
c
18
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
dreadful character. In the first place, he will often
prove that there is nothing to expiate. The fault,
skilfully interpreted, may become a merit. At the
worst, if it remains a fault, it may be washed away
by good works. Now, of all these, the best is to
devote yourself to the Jesuits, to the Ultra-montane
interest.
Do you perceive all the ability of these tactics of
the Jesuits ? On the one hand, the doctrine of
liberty and justice, which the middle age had
always objected to the Jurisconsults, or pagans,
as irreconcilable with Christianity, the Jesuits
adopt, and present themselves to the world as the
friends and champions of free will.
On the other hand, as this free will entails re-
sponsibility and justice according to his works, the
sinner is somewhat embarrassed ! The Jesuit
arrives in time to relieve him, undertakes to direct
this inconvenient liberty, and reduce all works to
the one capital work of serving Rome; so that moral
liberty, theoretically professed, becomes in practice
the best friend of authority.
Double falsehood. These men, calling themselves
Jesuits, men of Jesus, teach that man is saved less
l)y Jesus than by himself, than by his own free
will. They are then philosophers, friends of
liberty ? On the contrary, they are the fiercest
enemies of liberty and philosophy.
For, with the word free will they get rid of
Jesus by a juggle, getting rid at the same time also
of the liberty which they put foi'ward.
The matter becoming thus simplified on both
sides, a sort of tacit bargain was struck between
Rome, the Jesuits, and the world.
Rome gave up ChristianUy, that is, the prin-
ciple which constitutes its basis — (salvation by
Jesus Christ). Called upon to decide between
the two doctrines, she did not venture to express
her opinion *.
The Jesuits gave up morality after religion, re-
ducing the moral merits by which man may win
his salvation to one only, the political merit of
which we have spoken — that of serving Rome.
What did the woi-ld give up in return ?
The world (the portion of the world most
eminently worldly, the woman) gave up the most
precious of all things — her family and home. Eve
again betrayed Adam ; woman betrayed man, her
husband, her son.
Thus all sold their God. Rome sold religion,
and woman sold domestic happiness.
The weak minds of women, after the great cor-
ruption of the sixteenth century, incurably spoilt,
lull of passion and of fear, of evil desires in the midst
of remorse, eagerly seized on this means of sinning
ill accordance with conscience, of expiating without
making amends, without amelioration, or return
towards God. They were delighted at receiving in
the confessional, in lieu of all other penance, some
political commission, or intrigue. They infused
into this strange mode of expiation, the very vio-
lence of the guilty passions which they desired to
maintains the penal code, the Jesuit suppresses penance.
This is the real bait, the little fish by which the great one is
taken ; according to the expressive emblem, Imago primi
sceculi Socielalis Jesu.
* The Jesuits succeeded in causing silence to be imposed
on both parties, that is to say, Rome silenced both Mohna
and Saint Thomas.
expiate ; and in order to purchase the privilege
of remaining in sin, they often committed crime*.
The impassioned enthusiasm of woman, morbid
in everything else, was in this case sustained by the
masculine perseverance of the mysterious hand
which was at work behind her. To this action, at
once gentle and strong, ardent and persevering,
firm like iron, melting like fire, all characters and
even all interests yielded at last.
Some examples will explain my meaning.
In France, the aged Lesdiguieres had a great
political interest in remaining a Protestant; as such,
he was the leading man of his party. The king
rather than the governor of Dauphiny, he assisted
the Swiss and protected the population of Vaud
and Romand against the house of Savoy. But the
daughter of Lesdiguieres was gained over by Father
Cotton. She worked ably, patiently, upon her
father, and succeeded at length in persuading him
to abandon his high position for an empty title,
and to receive in exchange for his religion the
title of Constable.
In Germany, the character of the emperor Ferdi-
nand I., his interest, and the part he had to play,
inclined him to remain moderate, and not to make
himself subordinate to his nephew Philip II. Vio-
lence and fanaticism would reduce him to be the
follower of the latter. But the daughters of the
emperor laboured to such effect that the house of
Austria united itself by marriage with the houses of
Lorraine and Bavaria. The children of these three
houses were educated by the Jesuits f, who succeed-
ed in reuniting in Germany the broken thread of the
destiny of the Guises ; and succeeded even better
than the Guises. They made for their purpose blind
instruments, workmen in dijjlomacy and in tactics;
able workmen certainly, but mere workmen. I
speak of those hardy and devout generals, Ferdi-
nand the Second, of Austria, of Tilly, and of Maxi-
milian of Bavaria; those conscientious state-servants
of Rome, who, under the direction of their peda-
gogues, inflicted so long upon Europe a war at once
barbarous and scientific, pitiless and methodical.
The Jesuits launched them into it and th&n watched
them closely. Over the ruins of cities reduced to
ashes, and over fields covered with dead, the Jesuit
trotted on his mule beside the war-horse of Tilly.
The hoi-rid feature of this horrid war, the worst
ever waged,was the total absence of free inspiration,
spontaneous action. From its very commencement,
it is artificial and mechanical J; it is like a combat
of machines, or of phantoms. The strange beings,
created only to fight, march without heart, and
with vacant eye. How come to an understanding
with them ? How address them ? What pity was
to be expected from them ? In our wars of reli-
gion, in those of the Revolution, it was men that
fought ; each died for his idea, and falling on the
field of battle, shrouded himself in his faith. But
the men of the thirty years' war had no personal
life, no idea of their own ; their breath was nothing
but that of the evil genius which pushed them on.
• See in Leger, the vast system of espionage, of intrigue,
of secret persecution which the ladies of Piedmont and
France had organized under the direction of the Jesuits.
t See Ranke's "History of the Popes;" Dorigny, Life
of P. Canisius; and above all P. P. Zolf, Geschichte Maxi-
milians, i. 58, 95.
X With the exception, of course, of the electrical period
of Gustavus Adolphus.
CASUISTRY OF THE JESUITS.
19
These automata, though blind, are not the less eager
or determined. No history could give an idea of
tliis abominable phenomenon, if there did not re-
main some image of it in the accursed paintings
of that damned Salvator*.
This then was the fruit of gentleness, of benig-
nity, of paternity ; this warfare having, in the first
instance, by indulgence and connivance, extermi-
nated morality, having surprised the family, fasci-
nated the mother, and conquered the child, having
by a devilish art raised up the man-machine, it was
found that the creation was a monster, whose whole
idea, life, and action, was murder and nothing else.
True politicians, amiable men, good fathers, who
with so much gentleness have ably and from afar
off, arranged the thirty years' warf, seductive
Aquaviva, learned Canisius, good Possevino, the
friend of Saint Frangois de Sales, who can refuse to
admire the flexibility of your genius ? Whilst
organizing the terrible intrigues of this long St.
Bartholomew, you seem discussing with the good
saints the difference to be made in the case of those
" who died in love, and those who died of love."
What bye-path led from these gentle theories to
these atrocious results ? How did minds enervated
by gallant devotion and devout gallantry, tainted by
the daily facilities of an obliging casuistry, allow
themselves to be caught asleep in the meshes of po-
litical intrigue X • It would be a long story. To
write it, it would be necessary to enter into the
very heart of a nauseous literature, to wade into the
mud — Who can do this without turning sick ?
A few words, however, are essential. However
prepared the world might be, by bad morals and
bad taste, for the wretched productions poured on
it by the Jesuits, all the torrent of troul3led water
would have passed away without leaving any traces,
had they not mingled with it something of the ami-
able original who had carried away all hearts. The
charms of St. Francois de Sales, his beautiful spi-
ritual union with Madame de Chantal, the holy and
gentle seduction he had exei'cised over women and
children, served in an indirect but efficacious man-
ner the cause of this great religious intrigue.
By means of this small morality and absolution
at a low price, the Jesuits could corrupt consciences,
but could not quiet them. They could play more
or less skilfully on the rich instrument of false-
hood, which their institution gave them, airs of
science, art, literature, theology ; but with all
their false fingering, could they draw forth one
true note ? No ; not one !
It was Saint Fi"an9ois who taught them this true
• The expression is harsh ; I am sorry for it. If this
great artist painted war so cruelly, it was doubtless because
he had more heart than any of his contemporaries, and better
conceived the horrors of that terrible epoch.
t See especially in Ranke, how Aquaviva obtained a
hold on the mind of the young Maximilian of Bavaria,
\\ho was to play so great a part in the thirty years' war.
t Should the astonishing facility with which at the outset
this great enterprise prospered, be explained by the genius
of the contrivers ? In truth I think not. The spirit of in-
trigue, a certain diplomatic, patient, and artful cunning —
is this genius ? The celebrated Jesuits of the time, those
who best succeeded in the world, if we judge by what now
remains of them, were insipid writers, heavy pedants, or
grotesque wits. M. Ranke, with his benevolent impartiality,
in enumerating the heroes of the parties in this combat of
the human mind, desires to find a great man to oppose to
Shakespeare; he seeks, and finds Baldus.
and sweet note. They had only to play in imita-
tion of him to render their touch a little less dis-
cordant. The amiable qualities of his books, their
pretty defects, were ably turned to account. His
taste for littleness and humility, which led him to
look partially on the lesser beings of the creation,
as little children, lambs, birds, bees, established
among the Jesuits a taste for the minute, the nar-
row, for lownesses of style, and littlenesses of
heart. The innocent freedom of an angel pure as
the light, who was constantly exhibiting God in
his sweetest revelations, — in woman suckling, and
the divine mysteries of love, — emboldened his imi-
tators to the most ribald equivoques, and led them
on so far by their doubtful light, that, between gal-
lantry and devotion, the lover and the spiritual
father, the line became insensible.
The friend of Saint Franfois de Sales, the good
bishop Camus, with all his little romances, contri-
buted much to this. There was thenceforth nothing
but pious sheepfolds, devout Astreas, ecclesias-
tical Amyntases *. Conversion sanctifies every-
thing, I am aware, in these romances. The lovers
always end in the convent or the seminary ; but
they reach it by a long roimdabout road, and we
dream by the way.
The taste for the romantic +, the insipid, for the
paternal and benignant style easily gained ground.
The innocent had thus laboured for the crafty.
A Saint Fran9ois and a Camus prepared the way
for a father Douillet.
It was essential for the Jesuits to enfeeble, com-
press the mind, to render it weak and false, to
make the little very little, the simple idiots ; a
soul nourished with trifles, amused with toys,
would of course be easy to lead. The emblems,
rebusses, and moral riddles in which the Jesuits
delighted were very fit for this purpose. In
stupid emblems few books can compete with the
Imago primi sa-culi Societatis Jesu.
All these nonsensical little ways succeeded won-
derfully well with idle women, whose minds had long
been corrupted by an unintellectual gallantry. To
please them, in all times, only two things have
been necessary : in the first place, to amuse them,
to share in their taste for the small, the i-omantic,
the false ; secondly, to flatter their weaknesses,
and to spoil them by becoming more feeble, more
soft, more womanish than they.
This is the road marked out for all. How does
the lover usurp the place of the husband ? Less by
passion, for the most part, than by assiduity and
complaisance, by flattering their phantasy. Well !
the director will employ no other means ; he will
flatter, and with so much the more success as from
his character, from his cloth, some austerity was
expected ! But why may riot another flatter still
* In the Alexis, Camus excuses himself for writing re-
ligious romances by saying that he wrote them to supplant
profane ones : " He did as those nurses do who take medi-
cine for the sake of their nurselings." The copy in the Library
of the Arsenal is rendered curious by its manuscript notes.
t In a taste for the romantic our contemporaries have not
degenerated. The last editor of St. Franfois wishes he
could write the history of the Saint and Madame de Chantal
with "the pen which describes the death of Atala and the
chaste love of Cymodocea." (t. i. p. 24.3.) Edition dedicated
to the Archbishop of Paris.— The beau-ideal of flatness and
absurdity in this style may be found in the life of the Vir-
giji, by the abbe Orsini.
C 2
20
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
more ? We have just been witnessing an example
(respectable it is true) of these spiritual infidelities.
From confessor to confessor, each more gentle, more
indulgent the one than the other, there is a danger
of falling very low. To gain the day over so
many accommodating directors, a new degree of
easiness and looseness is required. It is necessary
that the new-comer should reverse the parts; that
instead of a judge in the tribunal of penitence, he
should become a suppliant ; that justice should
make excuses to the woman ; that God should fall
upon his knees !
The Jesuits, who by these means supplanted so
many directors, testify of themselves that iu this
kind of competition they had nothing to fear. In
easy indulgence, in disguised connivance, in subtilty
to deceive God, they knew perfectly well that never
would a superior be found to a Jesuit director.
Father Cotton feared so little his female penitents
leaving him, that he used to advise them some-
times to go to other confessors : " Go, go," he
would say; " try them; you will come back to me *."
Only imagine this general emulation between con-
fessors, directors, consulting casuists, to justify
every thing ; to form, every day, some adroit
means of pushing indulgence further, and of re-
presenting as innocent, acts which until then had
been believed culpable. The result of this war
upon sin, actively prosecuted by so many learned
men, was that, little by little, it disappeared from
the whole of human life ; sin Imew not where to
take refuge ; and it might be believed that the time
would come when evil would be no longer known in
the world.
That great work, the Provincial Letters, with
all the art of its method, leaves nevertheless one
thing to regret. In showing the unanimity of the
casuists, the author presents them iu some sort on
the same line, and as contemporaries. It would
have been very much more instructive to have
dated them, and awarded to each of them according
to his deserts, in the progressive development of
casuistry; to have shown how they went on per-
fecting, improving the one on the other, surpass-
ing, eclipsuig their predecessors.
With so great a competition it was necessary to
make immense efforts, and to tax their ingenuity to
the utmost. The penitent, having a choice, might
be fastidious. Every day he required absolution
on better terms ; whoever would not lower his
prices lost his customers.
It required an able man to find amid so much
indulgence the means of pushing it still further.
Beautiful science, elastic and easy, which, instead
of imposing rules, made itself wide or narrow, and
accommodated itself to the measure of all.
Every progress of this kind, being carefully
noted, served as a point of departure from which
to make a further advance.
In countries once attacked with fever, fever en-
genders fever ; the sick inhabitants neglecting the
cares necessary to health, every pool mantles with
filth, the water spreads into marshes, the miasma
thickens; a close, dull and heavy air weighs upon
the land. Men drag themselves slowly along or
lie down. Do not talk to them of any remedy ;
• See on this subject the singular fatuity of the Jesuit
Fichet, the contempt with which he speaks of the first director
of Madame de Chantal, who was too jealous of tier, and
whom he goes so far as to call "This shepherd." — p. 123 — 135.)
they are accustomed to the fever ; they have had
it from their birth ; their fathers liad it. Why
think of remedies ? The state of the country has
been such fi-om time immemorial ; it would be al-
most a pity, according to them, to make any change.
CHAPTER IV.
CONVENTS. — NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CONVENTS. — CONVENTS
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. — CONTRAST WITH THE
MIDDLE AGE. — THE DIRECTOR. — DISPUTE ABOUT THE
DIRECTION OF THE NUNS. — THE JESUITS GAIN THE
VICTORY BY MEANS OF CALUMNY.
A NAIVE and witty German lady, once told me
that on her first visit to Paris with lier husband,
they wandered for a long time through a strange,
melancholy quarter, where they made a number
of turnings and windings, without being able to
find their way. Having entered by a public
garden, they found at length another garden,
which brought them out by the quay. I perceived
that she was speaking of the learned and pious
quarter, which contains so many convents and
colleges, and which extends from the Luxembourg
to the Jardin des Plantes.
" I saw," says this lady, "whole streets with gar-
dens, bordered by high walls, which recalled to
mind the desert quarters of Rome, in which the
malaria reigns ; with this diff'erence, tiiat these
were not deserted, but mysteriously inhabited,
closed, suspicious, inhospitable. Other streets, very
gloomy, were as it were buried between two rows
of lofty grey houses, which did not look upon the
street, and which, as if in derision, exhibited long
rows of bricked-up windows, or else blinds so con-
structed as to admit the light, but prevent the
inmates from seeing the passers by. We asked our
way several times, and were often shown it; but, I
know not how, after having gone up, and down,
and up again, we always found ourselves at the same
point. Our uneasiness and fatigue increased. We
always came out, invariably, fatally, in the same
sad streets, and met the same sombre houses un-
graciously closed, which looked upon us askance.
Exhausted at length, and seeing no one, overcome
more and more by the melancholy which seemed
to ooze from the walls, I sat down upon a stone
and began to weep."
Melancholy is in fact the feeling which seizes on
and saddens the heart at the mere sight of these
ill-favoured liouses ; the gayest are the hospitals.
Built for the most part, or rebuilt at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, in those times of solemn
dulness, the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV.,
they display none of the lovely art of the Revival;
the last memorial of which is the Florentine fapade
of the Luxembourg. All the houses since built, even
those which affect a certain severe luxury, (for ex-
ample the Sorbonne,) are sometimes great, never
grand. With their liigh-pointed roofs, and rigid
lines, they have always a dry, sad, monotonous
priestly or old-maidenish air. In this they do not
belie their origin ; most of them having been built
for the innumerable daughters of the nobility, and
of the wealthier citizens who aped the nobility, and
who thus got rid of their incumbrances to enrich
the eldest son; the sisters were sent to these places
to die sadly and decently.
CONVENTS AND DIRECTORS.
21
The monuments of the middle age are melan-
choly, but not tiresome ; they impress us with the
force and sincerity of the sentiment which raised
them ; they are not for the most part official monu-
ments, but living works of the people, the children
of its faith. These, on the contrary, were raised
by a class, by the noble classes which swarmed into
being in the seventeenth century, through subser-
viency, the antechamber, and ministerial offices.
They are hospitals opened for the daughters of
such families. Their great number almost deceives
us respecting the force and the extent of the x'eli-
gious reaction of that time. Look on them well, and
tell me, I pray ye, if you perceive the least trace of
the old asceticism; are they religious houses or hos-
pitals, barracks or colleges ? There is no distinct-
ive mark by which you can tell. They may have
been intended for all or none of these purposes.
They have only one character, but a very deter-
minate one ; severe uniformity, decent mediocrity
and ennui — ennui realized in an architectural form,
palpable, tangible and visible emiui.
That which infinitely multiplied these houses
was the austerity of the old rules having by that
time become much softened ; parents were less
reluctant to make their daughters take the veil ;
it was no longer to bury them alive. The convent
parlours were drawing-rooms, always crowded with
company, collected under pretence of edification.
Fine ladies came to confide their secret adventures,
filling the minds of the nuns with intrigues and
squabbles, and troubling them with vain regrets.
With their thoughts thus carried back to the world,
they felt the more keenly the dulness of their own
life ; a life, indeed, of little austerity, but of nume-
rous insignificant and paltry practices, a life gene-
rally idle, an infinite void.
The monastic life was, it must be confessed, ano-
ther, and more serious thing in the middle age ; there
was in the convent more training for death and a
more active life. The system was generally based on
two things, followed sincerely, and to the letter — the
desti'uction of the body and the vivification of the
soul. Against the body an exterminating fast was
employed, along with excessive vigils, and frequent
bleedings. For the development of the soul, monks
and nuns were required to x-ead, to copy *, to chant;
and up to the eleventh century, they understood
what they sang, as Latin differed but in a trifling
degree from the language commonly spoken. The
offices possessed then a di-amatic character, which
unceasingly sustained and kept alive attention ;
many things, since reduced to mere words, were then
expressed by gestures, by pantomimes; what is
spoken to-day was acted then f . When religious
service assumed its present serious, sober, weari-
• The Rules of St. Cesaire and others prescribed to the
nuns the duty of copying manuscripts. (See my memoir
on the Education of Women in the Middle Ages, at the end
of the third edition of the Introduction to Universal History.)
Many of the beautiful miniatures which ornament them,
which seem a labour of love and of infinite patience, betray
a female hand. — Who would believe that now-a-days it is a
crime for a nun to know how to draw, or to pick flowers in
order to paint them? We have learnt this, however, with
many other curious things resi)ecting the interior of con-
vents, from the revelations of the Sister Marie Lemonnier.
Memoire de M. Tillard, p. 45. Caen.)
t See my Origines du Droit. — D. Martene, de Ritibus,
Src.
some character, the nuns had still a compensa-
tion in lectures, legends, the lives of saints, and
various translations; as, for example, the admirable
French version of the Imitation*. All these con-
solations were withdrawn in the sixteenth century:
it was discovered that there was danger in render-
ing them too fond of reading. Even chanting in
the seventeenth century, seemed suspicious to many
confessors ; it was feared that they would grow
tender in singing the praises of God+.
How was all this to be replaced ? Instead of these
offices no longer understood, of reading, and of these
forbidden chants ; instead of so many things,
which were successively taken away from them,
what was substituted ?
A thing ? no, but a man, to speak plainly, the
director. — The director was a novelty — little known
in the middle ages, which had only possessed the
confessor.
Yes, it is a man who inherits all that vast empty
space; it is his conversation, his teaching that is
destined to fill it up. Prayer, reading if it is allowed,
everything is done under him and by him. God,
whom they before received through the medium of
their books, or of their eyes, — God is henceforth
dispensed to them by this man, doled forth by him
day by day according to the measure of his heart.
Here, a thousand ideas obtrude themselves. But
they must have patience ; we will listen to them by
and by. Now they would break the thread of liis-
toi'ical deduction.
At the first beginning of devout re-action, the
nuns were commonly governed by monks of their
own order ; the Feuillantines by the Feuillants,
the Carmelites by the Carmelites, the nuns of St.
Elizabeth by the monks of the order of Picpus. The
Capucliines were not only confessed and directed by
the Capuchins, but supported by them, and the pro-
fits of their collections J.
The monks did not preserve this exclusive pos-
session. During more than a quarter of a century,
priests, monks, friars of all colours, carried on,
on this subject, a fierce warfare. This mysterious
kingdom of women, immured and dependent, and
over whom an undivided dominion could be ex-
ercised, was, not without reason, the object of a
general ambition. Such houses, apparently so
still, and such strangers to the world, are often not
on that account the less great centi'es of action.
There existed here an immense power for the
orders which could seize on it, and with individuals,
priests, or monks, it was (whether they confessed
it or not), — it was an affiiir of the heart.
What I say here, I say of the purest and the
most strict, who are often the most tender. The
honourable attachment cherished by the cardinal
de Berulle for the Cai-melites, whom he had brought
hither, was known to every one. He located them
near him; he visited them at any hour of the day
and evening, — the Jesuits said, even of the night.
To them, when sick, he went, to seek convalescence.
When Paris was visited by the plague, he said he
would not quit the town," because it contained his
Carmelites."
The Oratorians and the Jesuits, natural enemies
• History of France, t. ii. p. 109.
t Chateaubriand, Vie de Ranee, p. 227, 229.
% See Heliot, and for Paris especially, Felibien, who is very
full on the subject.
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES,
and adversaries, joined in a common cause, in order
to drive away the Carmelites from the direction
of these nuns ; and when they had succeeded, they
began to fight amongst themselves.
The austere order of the Carmelites, which
met with little success amongst us, was, neverthe-
less, important, considered as the ideal of repent-
ance, as religious poetry; the enthusiastic spirit of
St. Theresa still presided over it ; here it was
those came to die, who, like Madame de la Valliere,
were so broken in spirit, that nothing but death
could heal the wound.
But the two great institutions of the period,
those which gave expression to its mind, and which
were most popular were, those of the Visitandines
and the Ursulines. The first possessed, in the reign
of Louis XIV., nearly a hundred and fifty monas-
teries ; and the second three or four hundred.
The Visitandines, as is known, were the mildest
of all the orders ; in a state of inaction they
awaited the coming of the holy Bridegroom ;
their life of lassitude was admirably adapted to
create visionai-ies. The surprising success of
Marie Alaeoque, and how it was turned to ad-
vantage by the Jesuits, is well-known.
The Ursulines, more useful, devoted themselves
to teaching the three hundred and fifty convents
belonging to them in this century, and educated, ac-
cording to the most moderate calculation, thirty-
five thousand young girls. This vast educational
institution, directed by able hands, might become
a great political instrument.
The UrsuHnes and Visitandines were subject to the
bishops, who chose their confessors. St. Francois
de Sales, so staunch a friend of the Jesuits and
the religious orders in general, had shown himself
distrustful of them in the aff"air which lay nearest
his heart — the Visitation. "It seems to me (he
remarks somewhere) that these good maidens know
not what they desire, if they wish to subject them-
selves to the authority of the monks, who are in
truth estimable servants of God ; but it is a hard
thing for women to be governed by those orders,
7cho have been accustomed to deprive them of the holy
freedom of the spirit *."
It is only too easy to perceive how the female
orders servilely imbibe tlie spirit of the men who
direct them. Those who were governed by the
monks displayed a wild, eccentric, violently devo-
tional character. Under secular priests, the Orato-
rians, and Doctrinarians, they show a certain
amount of reason, a little narrow-minded, ordinary,
dry, and sterile wisdom.
The nuns wlio received from the bishops their
ordinary confessor, themselves chose an extra-
ordinary confessor, wlio in his capacity of extraor-
dinary, failed not to fill the place of the other, and
supersede his authority ; this man was most com-
monly a Jesuit. The new orders of the Ursulines
and the Visitandines, created by priests, who de-
sired to separate them from the monks, fell never-
theless under their influence. The priests laid the
foundation, and the Jesuits reaped the profits.
Nothing served the purpose of the Jesuits better,
than to say, and to repeat unceasingly, that their
strict founder had forbidden them to undex-take the
government of nunneries. This was true of con-
vents in general, but false of nuns in particular,
• Works, t. xi. p. 120. (ed. 1833.)
and of their individual direction ; they did nut
govern them collectively, but singly.
The Jesuit did not meddle with the daily details
of spiritual management, the petty annoyances of
trifling sins. He was never importunate, but inter-
fered at the proper moment ; he was, above all,
useful in saving the nuns from relating to the
confessor what they wished to conceal. The latter
became, by degrees, a sort of husband who was
considered as nothing.
If by accident he had any firmness of character,
if he was capable of exerting any influence, calum-
nies were recklessly employed to effect his removal.
The audacity of the Jesuits in these matters may
be judged of when they did not fear to attack a
man of such authority as the cardinal de Berulle •.
One of his kinswomen having become pregnant
among the Carmelites, in a convent in which he
had never set his foot, they boldly accused him.
Finding no one to believe them, and perceiving
that they should gain nothing by attacking him on
the score of morals, they raised a cry against his
books. They contained, said they, the concealed
poison of a dangerous mysticism. The cardinal
was too tender, too indulgent, too gentle, both as
theologian and Director. Prodigious effrontery !
when all the world knew and said what sort of
directors they themselves were.
This operated, nevertheless, in the long run, if
not against Be'ruUe, at least against the Oratory,
which became disgusted and frightened with the di-
rection of the nuns, and ended by deserting from it.
This is a remarkable example of the all-powerful
effects of calumny, when it is organized on a grand
scale by a large body, spread with unanimity, and
said and re-said in chorus. A chorus of thirty
thousand men, every day repeating the same thing
in the whole Christian world, — who could resist
this ? In this, properly speaking, consists the art of
the Jesuits; and they have been incomparable in it.
At their birth, they were addressed in much the
same words that Virgil addressed to his Roman, in
the well-known passage — (Excudent alii spirantia
mollius sera, &c.). " Others will animate brass, or
infuse life into marble; they will excel in other arts."
— " Do thou, Jesuit, remember, thy art is ca-
lumny!"
CHAPTER V.
REACTION OF MORALITY.— AKNAUD, 1C43.— PASCAL, 165?.
ABASEMENT OF THE JESUITS. — HOW THEY SECURED
THE SUPPORT OF THE KING ANH OF THE POPE, AND
SILENCED THEIR ENEMIES. — DISCOURAGEMENT OF THE
JESUITS, THEIR CORRUPTION ; THEY PROTECT THE
FIRST aUIETISTS; IMMORALITY OF QUIETISM. — DES-
MARETS DE ST. SORLIN. — MORIN BURNT, A.D. 1G63.
Morality was weakened, but was not quite extinct.
Undermined by casuists, by Jesuitism, and the in-
trigues of the clergy, it was saved by the laity. This
is the contrast presented by this period. Priests,
even the best of them, like the Cardinal de Be'rulle,
mingle in the world and in politics. Illustrious
laymen, like Descartes and Poussin, seek solitude.
Philosophers become monks, and saints conduct
the affairs of the world.
In this century, the natural order of things seems
• Tabaraud, Life of Berulle, t. i. passim, especiallv
p. 115.
ARNAUD AND PASCAL.
23
to be reversed. The clergy, aspiring to political
power, end by obtaining the expulsion of the Pro-
testants, the proscription of the Jansenists, and
the submission of the Gallicans to the Pope. The
laity take the lead in science; Descartes and Galileo
give the impulse, Leibnitz and Newton bestow the
harmony. That is to say, the Church will triumph
in temporal matters, and the laity will possess
themselves of the spiritual power.
From the desert where our great lay monks
have sought a retreat, a purer wind blows. Another
age, it is felt, is beginning ; the modern age, the
age of work, after this of disputes. No more
dreams, no more scholastic divinity. It is ne-
cessary to go seriously to work, early, before day-
break. It is a little cold, but never mind ; it is only
the invigorating cold of the dawn, as after those beau-
tiful nights of the noi'th, where a queen, twenty years
of age, seeks Descartes at four in the morning, to
learn algebra and geometry. This serious and ex-
alted spirit, which remodelled philosophy and modi-
fied literature, could not be without its influence
upon theology. It found a resting-place, small and
imperceptible as yet, in the community of the
friends of Port-Royal ; to their austerity it added
grandeur, and morality asserted its claims, i-eligion
awoke to a sense of her danger.
Every thing prospered with the Jesuits ; con-
fessors of kings, of the great, of beautiful ladies,
they beheld everywhei-e their morality blooming;
when, over that calm sky, the thunder suddenly
bursts, and the bolt falls. I am speaking of Ar-
naud's book, so unexpected and so overwhelming —
On frequent Communion. (1643.)
It was not the Jesuits, or Jesuitism, that alone
felt the blow, but every thing which served to
enervate Christianity by a softening indulgence.
Once more religion showed hei'self austere and
grave; and the world beheld with astonishment the
pale face of the Crucified. He came again to say,
in the name of grace, what natural reason also de-
clares : " That there is no real expiation without
repentance." What became, in the face of this
severe truth, of all those little elusive arts ? What
became of worldly devotions, of romantic piety, of
all the Philotheas, the Erotheas, and their imi-
tators ? — The contrast appeai-ed shocking.
Others have said, and will say all this infinitely
better. I am not now writing the history of Jan-
senism : the theological question is for ever set at
rest, but the moral question survives, and history
owes it a word ; it cannot continue indiff'erent
between honest and dishonest men. Whether the
Jansenist party has or has not exaggerated the
doctrine of grace, we must call this party, as it de-
serves to be called in this fine struggle, the party of
virtue.
So far from Amaud and Pascal having proceeded
to too great lengths against their adversaries, it
might very easily be shown that they themselves
stopped short of the goal ; that they did not make
use of all their weapons ; that they feared by at-
tacking the Jesuitical direction, on certain delicate
points, to do wrong both to direction, and con-
fession in general.
The Jesuit Ferrier confesses, that after the ter-
rible blow of the Protinciales, the Jesuits were
crushed, and fell henceforth into derision and con-
tempt. A crowd of bishops condemned them ; not
one rose up in their defence.
One of the means employed by them to patch
up their position was boldly to say, that the
opinions with which they were reproached, were
not those of the society, but of certain individuals.
The reply made was, that as all tlieir books had been
examined by their general, before publication, they
must be considered to emanate from the whole
society. So, to deceive the simple, they caused a
few to write against their own doctrines. A Spanish
Jesuit wrote against Ultra-montanism. Another,
the Father Gonzales, wrote a book against the ca-
suists, which was of great service to them. When
at length, Rome became ashamed of their doctrine
and disowned them, they placed Gonzales in their
front, printed his book, and made him their general.
Even at the present day, it is with his book and
name that they oppose us. Thus they have an
answer for everyone. Are you partial to indul-
gence, take Escobar; if you are partial to severity,
take Gonzales.
Let us see the results of this universal contempt
into which they fell after the Provinciales. The
public conscience being so much put on its guard,
will not every one be anxious to fly from them 1
Will not their confessionals be deserted ; their
colleges avoided ? If this were your inference, it
would be a mistaken one.
They are too necessary to the corrupt nature of
the age. How without them, could the king, with
his double adultery exhibited to the eyes of all
Europe, perform his devotions ? Father Ferrier,
Father Canard*, Father La Chaise, will remain
with him to the end, like those too useful pieces of
furniture which we cannot do without.
But does not Rome feel how much she is com-
promised by such auxiliaries ! Does not an urgent
necessity exist that she should separate from them 1
Some weak attempts were made, and the pope
condemned the apology for the casuists, that the
Jesuits had put forth, and this exhausted all the
energy of Rome. If it still possessed any, it was
directed against the enemies of the Jesuits. These
carried the day ; they had, in the beginning of the
century, induced the pope to impose silence on the
doctrine of grace defended by the Dominicans; and
again they silenced it, when in the middle of the
century it began to speak by the voice of the Jan-
senists.
For this silence twice imposed, the Jesuits paid
Rome by more eagerly crying up the doctrine of
Papal infallibility. Upon this crumbling Babel
they were not afraid to build ; they raised it by
new stories : firstly, they promulgated (thi'ough
Bellarmin) the infallibility of the pope in matters of
faith ; secondly, the d.anger having become greater,
they committed a bold insensate act, which, how-
ever, gained the good will of Rome ; they caused
the pope, in the decrepitude of his power, to do
what in its height he had never dared to do — to '
•proclaim himself infallible in matters of fact.
And this, at the very moment when, upon the
principal facts of nature and history, Rome was
obliged to confess herself in the wrong. Without
speaking of the New World, which after having
denied she was obliged to own, she condemns Gali-
leo, and then she submits to him, she adopts his
system, she teaches it; the penance which she made
• This is the man who was called, at his own desire, by
his Latin name, Annat.
24
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
him endure for one day, she lierself has been com-
pelled to perform for two hundred years since Ga-
lileo*.
Another fact, in one sense, still more serious : —
The fundamental right of the popes, the title
of their power, those famous Decretals which they
have quoted and defended so long as criticism,
unaided by printing, was unable to shed light on
the matter ; well ! those very Decretals the pope
was obliged to confess to be a falsehood, a forgery f .
What ! it is when Papacy has disavowed its own
words and given itself the lie upon the fundamental
fact on which its own right depends, it is then that
the Jesuits claim for her infallibility in matters
of fact 1
The Jesuits have been the corrupters and temp-
ters of popes, as well as of kings. They obtained
mastery over kings by ministering to their concu-
piscence, and over popes by feeding their pi-ide.
Ludicrous and touching spectacle, to behold this
poor little Jansenist party, so great at that time in
genius and in heart:]:, obstinately continuing to
appeal to the justice of Rome, and kneeling before
this corrupted judge §.
The Jesuits were not so blind as not to see that
the Popedom, foolishly exalted by them in theo-
logy, was losing ground rapidly in the political world.
At the beginning of the century, the pope was still
powerful ; he administered the whip to Henry IV.
on the back of the cardinal D'Ossat. In the middle
of the century, after the great effort of the thirty
years' war, the pope is not even consulted on the
■subject of the treaty of Westphalia. In the treaty
of the Pyrenees, between Catholic Spain and Most
Christian France, the very existence of the pope
was forgotten.
The Jesuits had undertaken an impossibility ; and
the principal means they employed, the appropria-
tion of the rising generation, was no less impossible.
Towards that their greatest effort was directed ;
they had succeeded in securing in their hands most
of the children of the nobility and of families in
easy circumstances ; they had made a machine of
education, for narrowing men's heads and flattening
the mind. But such is the vigour of modern
genius, that with a system most felicitously calcu-
lated to stifle invention, the first generation pro-
• They will say that these are the sciences of matter, and
that they are the men of the spirit. To which I answer :
He who knows not the natural, has no right to separate
from it the supernatural, nor to come to any decision respect-
ing it.
t By the instrumentalityof two cardinals and librariansof
the Vatican, Bellarmin and Baronius, one of whom was
confessor to the Pope.
I Who can behold in the Louvre without emotion that tragic
portrait of one of the Arnauds ( Angelique ?) That pale face, so
virginal, so austere, that transparent lamp of alabaster,
through which beams the internal flame, the flame of grace,
— the flame also of combat ! But how can we blame them
for it ; persecuted, given up to those whom all the world
despised ! Virtue and genius overcome by cunning ! — I
never go to the Museum without looking also on the touch-
ing painting of the young nun of Port Royal, saved by a
prayer. Ah ! those yoimg girls were saints, it must be con-
fessed; whether we admire or not their spirit of resistance,
saints ; and, moreover, in the forms of those days, the true
defenders of liberty.
§ Read, however, the immortal fifth letter of Nicole (Ima-
ginaires et Visionnaires, i. HO) as eloquent as the Provinciales,
and much more bold.
duced Descartes, the second, the author of Tartnffe,
and the third, Voltaire.
What most galled them was, that by the light of
this great modern torch, which they could not extin-
guish, they beheld their own deformity. They
knew and began to despise themselves. There is
no one, however hardened he may be by falsehood,
who can altogether deceive himself as to what he
is. They were compelled to confess that their
doctrine of probability, was, at bottom, only doubt,
and the absence of all principle. They could not
prevent themselves from making the discovery that
they. Christians par excellence, the champions of
faith, were in i-eality nothing but sceptics.
Of faith ! But of what faith ? It was not of Chris-
tian faith ; all their theology served no pur-
pose, but to ruin the basis on which Christianity
stood — grace, gratuitous salvation, by the blood of
Jesus Christ.
Champions of a principle ? No, but agents of an
enterprise, occupied with one affair, and an im-
possible affaii", the restoration of the Papacy.
Some few Jesuits resolved to seek a remedy
against their abasement. They publicly confessed
the urgent necessity of reform of which the society
stood in need. Their chief, a German, dared to
attempt this reform; and suffered accordingly. The
great majority of the Jesuits desired to maintain
abuses, and so deposed him *.
These good workmen, who had laboured so assi-
duously to justify the enjoyments of others, wished
to enjoy themselves also. They chose for general
a man after their own hearts, amiable, mild, and
good, the epicure Oliva. Rome, recently governed
by Madam Olympia, was rolling in indulgence ; Oliva,
secluded in a delicious villa, said, " Business to-
morrow ;" and let the society govern itself as it listed.
Some became merchants, bankers, cloth-manu-
facturers, for the advantage of their houses. Others,
following more closely the example of the pope,
worked for their nephews, and attended to the in-
terests of their family. Those who had wit, co-
quetted, and wrote madrigals. Others amused
themselves with the gossiping of nuns, with the
little secrets of women, with sensual inquisitiveness.
Their rectors, debarred the society of women, be-
came only too often college Thyrsises and Cory-
dons; in Germany a frightful trial + was the result,
in which the honour of a great many of those proud
and stern German houses was somewhat roughly
treated.
The Jesuits, abased so low, both in their theo-
logy and in their practice, enlarged their party by
the strangest auxiliaries. Every declared enemy
of the Jansenists became their friend. In this
we see the immoral want of consistency of the so-
ciety, and its perfect indifference to system. These
people, who fir more than half a century fought
for free will, basely allied themselves, by a transi-
tion from one extreme to the other, with those mys-
tics who confound all liberty in God. But lately
reproached with following the principles of philo-
sophers, and Pagan jurisconsults, who give every
• This episode of the History of the Jesuits, much ob-
scured by them, has been cleared up by Ranke, from manu-
script documents.
+ A small edition was reprinted in 1843. M. Nodier gave
me a copy of this rarity, infinitely rare now.— I cannot now
lay my hands on it.
IMMORALITY OF QUIETISM.
25
thing to justice, nothing to grace, nothing to love ;
and now behold them welcoming the new-born
Quietism, and the preacher of love, the visionai-y
Desmarets de St. Sorliii.
Desmarets had, it is true, rendered them essential
service. He succeeded in dismembering Port-
Royal, by gaining over a few of the nuns. He was
a principal agent in tlie death of poor Morin,
another more original and more innocent visionary,
who believed himself to be the Holy Ghost *. He
himself relates how, encouraged by Father Ca-
nard (Annat) the king's confessor, he obtained the
confidence of the unhappy man, made him believe
that he was his disciple, and procured from him
written proofs, which afterwards brought him to
the stake (a.d. 1663).
The favour of the all-powerful confessor gained
for the most extravagant of Desmarets' works, the
approbation of the archbishop of Paris. He declared
himself a prophet, and promised to raise for the
king and tlie pope an army of a hundred and forty
thousand devotees, champions of papal infallibility,
to exterminate, in concert with Spain, the Turks
and the Jansenists.
These devotees, or victims of love, were persons
immolated, annihilated in themselves, and who lived
for God alone. Henceforth they could do no evil.
" The soul," he ai'gued, " having become a nonen-
tity, cannot consent ; whatever it does, not having
consented, it commits no sin. It does not think
at all, either of what it does, or of what it has not
done, for it has done nothing at all. — God, being in
us, does every thing, suffers every thing ; the devil
cannot discover the creature, either in itself, for
it is but a nonentity, or in its acts, for it performs
none. — Through an entire dissolution of ourselves,
the virtue of the Holy Ghost flows into us, and
we become entirely God by an admirable delformity.
— If there be still troubles in the inferior part,
the superior knows not of them, but the two parts
subtilised, rarified, end by changing into God, the
inferior as well as the other ; God abides then tcith
the movements of sensuality tchkh are all sanctified f.
Desmarets was not content with printing this
doctrine with the permission of the king and the
approbation of the archbishop. Strong in the sup-
port of the Jesuits he preached to the nuns, and
had access to the convents. Layman as he was,
he had got to be director of the nuns. He related
to them his dreams of devout gallantry, and made
inquiries about their carnal temptations. A man
so completely annihilated might fearlessly write
the greatest nonsense : the following letter, for
example — " I embrace you, my very dear dove, in
our nothingness, nullity that I am, each of us being
all in our all, through our beloved Jesus !"
What a progress in the few years since the Pro-
mnc'iales! What has become of the Casuists; those
• A belief common in the middle age. Morin was a
man of the middle age, who had wandered by accident into
the seventeenth century. His Thoughts, (1647,) contain
many eloquent and original passages ; among them this tine
verse (p. 164), "Thou knowest well that love changes to itself
that which it loves." The life of Morin was innocent ; the
decision (so cruel!) accuses him of no sin against morality.
Desmarets ruined him through jealousy ; he desired to be a
prophet on his own account, and was not content with being
the St. John the Baptist of the new Messiah.
+ Desmarets de Saint Sortin, Delights of the Spirit. Day
29, p. 170. See also his Spiritual Letters, &c.
simple people, who took sins one by one, and by a
great effort effaced one and then another ? Here
they are all effaced.
Casuistry was an art, which had its masters, its
doctors. ^3ut now what need of doctors ? Every
spiritual man, every devout person, every Jesuit,
whether layman or priest, can speak the soft
language of pious tenderness. The Jesuits have
been humbled, but Jesuitism gains ground. The
question is no longer how to direct tlie intention
every day, by a special equivocation for each case.
Love, which mingles and confounds every thing,
is the sovereign equivocation, the sweetest, the
most powerful. Lull the will to sleep, and inten-
tion no longer exists; the soul, " losing its nothing-
ness in its All," allows itself to be softly annihilated
on the bosom of love.
CHAPTER VI.
SEODEL OF MOR.tL REACTION. — TARTUFPE, A.D. 1664 —
1669. — rARTUFFE IN REAL LIFE. — WHY TARTUPFE IS
NOT A eCIETIST.
The devout man taken in flagrant delinquency
by the man of the world, the man of the church ex-
communicated by the comedian — this is the mean-
ing, the object of the Tartufle *.
The great moral question laid down by Plato in
his Athenian Tartufie (Euthyphron) : Without
justice, can there be holiness ? — a question so clear
of itself, but industriously obscured by the casuists,
was put in its proper light. The theatre gave new
stability to religious morality f, so long sapped in
the Church.
The author of the TartufFe chose his subject not
from society in general, but from a more narrow
sphere, from the family circle, the fireside, from the
holy of hohes of modern life. This comedian, this
impious person, was the man who of all the world
held most at heart the religion of the family, and
yet he had no family. Tender and melancholy, he
sometimes, in his domestic sorrow, used, in speak-
ing of himself, an extremely characteristic remark :
" I ought to have foi'eseen, that one thing there
was which fitted me little for family society — my
austerity J."
The Tartuffe, that great and sublime fresco, is of
a very simple design. ]\Iore finished, it would have
been less popular. Mental reservation, and the
• The appearance of the Tartuffe and the conquest of
Flanders marks the literary and political apogee of the
age of Louis XIV. France, which up to that time had
represented the modern principle, turned afterwards against
that principle, and, by attacking Holland, prepared the
marriage of Holland and England, that is to say, the great-
ness of England, and its own ruin.
t An esprit fort, Saint Evremond, writes to a friend : "I
have just read the Tartuffe — " If I am saved, I shall owe ray
salvation to it. Devotion is so reasonable in the mouth
of Cleante, that lam compelled to abandon my philosophy;
and false devotees are so well painted that very shame will
make them abandon hypocrisy. Sacred pieiy, how much
good you will bring into the world !" Letter, quoted in the
edition of M. Aim^-Martin. (1837.) t. iu p. 125.
I See his life by Grimarest, the ingenious notices of M.
Genin (French Plutarch), and the more important work of
M. E. Noel on the biography of Moli^re discovered in his
own comedies (in the press).
26
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
direction of the intentions, two things at which the
world had laughed since the Pronnciales, sufficed for
Moliere. He did not dare to introduce upon the
stage the new mysticism, too little known as yet, or
too dangerous to be touched.
Perhaps, if he had made use of the jargon of
Desmarets and the early Quietists, if he had put
into the mouth of Tartuffe their mystic tender-
nesses, the same thing would have happened as
happened to the ridiculous sonnet in the Misan-
thrope— the pit would have applauded.
The evening before the first representation of
Tartuffe, Moliere read the piece to Ninon; "and
to repay him in the same coin, she related a
similar adventure which happened to her, with a
scoundrel of the same sort, whose portrait she
sketched in colours so vivid and natural, that, if
the piece had not been already written, he would
never, he said, have undertaken it."
What could have been wanting to this master-
piece, to tliis drama, so profoundly conceived, so
powerfully executed ? Nothing, doubtless, but what
the religious attitude of the times, and the custom
of our theatres excluded.
A thing impossible to describe in so short a
drama, (and which, nevertheless, constitutes the
leading feature of the character,) was the way
in which he made his approaches, the long wind-
ings by which he reached his end, the patience of
his cunning and slow fascinations.
Every tiling is forcibly put, but a little abruptly.
This man received, through charity, into the house,
this low rogue, this glutton, who eats like six men,
this knave witli the red ear — how does he become
so soon emboldened, and how does he aim so high ?
The declaration of such a man to such a woman,
of a proposed son-in-law to liis future step-mother,
astonishes the reader ; on the stage, perhaps, it
appears more probable.
Elmire, when the man of God makes point blank
thiss urprising declaration, is by no means pre-
pared for it. A real Tartuffe would have managed
the matter very differently ; humble and patient,
he would have slowly taken a footing in the house.
He would have waited a favourable moment. If,
for example, Elmire had experienced those indis-
cretions and levities of worldly lovers of which Tar-
tuffe speaks, then, broken in spirit by these trials,
enervated, feeble, and cast down, had he suddenly
sought her, — then, perhaps, she would have allowed
him to say, in the soft jargon of quietism, many
things which she would not listen to at the moment
when Moliere presents her to us.
Mademoiselle Bourignon, in her curious life,
which ought to be reprinted, relates in what danger
she found herself through her confidence in a saint
of this description. ... I shall let her relate it in
her own words; only premising that the pious lady,
who had just inherited a fortune, intended to era-
ploy this wealth in endowing convents, and other
pious works.
" One day, being in the streets of Lille, I met
a man with whom I was unacquainted, who said to
me in passing, ' You will not do what you desire,
but you will do what you do not desire.' Two
days afterwards, the same man came to my house,
and said, ' What did you think of me V ' That
you were,' answered I, ' either a fool or a prophet.'
'Neither the one nor the other. I am a poor
fellow from a village near Douai ; and my name ia
Jean de Saint Saulieu. All my study is chanty.
I lived first with a hermit, but my present director
is my cur^, M. Roussel. I teach poor children
to read. The greatest charity you can do is to I
found an asjlum for orphan girls ; there are so
many in consequence of the wars. The convents
are rich enough already.' He spoke three hours
following, with much earnestness.
" I inquired about him of the priest who was his
director, and who assured me that he was a man
of apostolic zeal. (Observe that the priest had
thought to gain the rich heiress for a nephew of his;
the nephew having failed, he wanted to secure her
for his creature.) Saint Saulieu often came again,
and spoke divinely of sjjirituai things. I could not
understand how so uneducated a man could speak
in so exalted a manner of divine mysteries. I be-
lieved him to be, in truth, inspired by the Holy
Ghost. He himself said that he was dead to na-
ture. He had been a soldier, and he had returned
from the wars as pure as a child. By extreme
abstinence, he had lost all taste for meats, for
drinks, and could not distinguish wine from beer !
He passed the best part of his time on his knees in
the churches. He might be seen walking along the
streets with a modest air and downcast eyes, with-
out looking at any thing ; as if entirely lost to
the world. He visited the poor, the sick, and gave
away all he possessed. In the winter, whenever
lie met a poor, half-clothed being he would draw
him aside, and, taking off his coat, give it to him.
My heart was full of joy at perceiving that there
were still such men in the world. I thanked God
that it was so ; and I thought I had now found a
counterpart of myself. Priests, and other pious
people, entertained the same confidence in him ;
they went to consult him, and receive from him
good advice.
" I entertained a strong repugnance to quitting
my retirement, to found this hospital for childi'en
which Saint Saulieu advised me to do. But he
brought to me a tradesman who had begun the
same thing, and who offered me a house where
he had already assembled a few poor little girls.
I entered it in November, 1653. I cleaned these
children, who were dirty enough to frighten one.
This was a very disagreeable duty ; I had no one
with me who liked it. But at last I made a
rule, submitted myself to it ; and we lived in com-
mon, and ate at the same table. I kept as much
to myself as possible ; but I was compelled to speak
with all sorts of persons. Monks, devotees, came,
whose conversation gave me little pleasure. I was
often sick to death.
" The house where Saint Saulieu taught having
been destroyed, and he himself dismissed, he re-
tired to that of the merchant of whom I have
already spoken. He besought me to assist him in
founding a hospital like mine, for boys. To defray
the first expense. Saint Saulieu was to farm a
bureau of the town, w hich was worth tv/o thousand
francs a-year, and the revenue of which would be
devoted to this foundation. I became security for
him. He received one year's rent, and then said,
that he should require, before beginning anything,
another year's rent, to have wherewith to furnish
the house. This made four thousand francs; when
he had obtained six thousand, he kept them, saying
that it was the reward of his labour, and that he
had earned it well.
THE TARTUFFE :— STILL NOT A QUIETIST.
27
*' 1 had not wiiite J for this to have my suspicions
aroused. I had had strange internal views on the
subject of this man. I one day saw a black wolf
playing with a little white lamb. Another day I
saw the heart of Saint Saulieu, and a little Moorish
child, with a crown and sceptre of gold, who was
sitting upon it, as though the devil had been the
king of his heart. I did not conceal these visions
from him ; but he flew into a rage, and told
me I ought to confess myself, for having thought
so badly of my neighbour; that he took especial
care not to be a black wolf ; that, on the contrary,
on approaching me, he became white and more and
more chaste. One day, nevertheless, he told me
that we ought to marry, still preserving our vir-
ginity ; that, by this union we should do much
more good. To which I replied, that such a
union did not require the sanction of marriage.
He, nevertheless, showed me several little evi-
dences oi friendship, of which, at first, I took little
heed. At last, he discovered himself all at once,
said that he loved me to distraction, that for many
years he had studied spiritual books, the better to
gain me ; that now having had such frequent ac-
cess to me, I must be his wife, either by love, or by
force ; and he approached me to caress me. I got
into a passion, and commanded him to leave the
house. Then he melted into tears, fell on his
knees, and said, it was the devil tempted him.
I was silly enough to believe and pardon him.
" The thing did not end here, he was continually
repeating his conduct. He followed me every-
w-here ; he entered the house in spite of my girls.
He went so far as to hold a knife to my throat, in
order to force me to yield. At the same time, he
said every where, that he had possessed me, ' that
I was his wife by promise.' I complained in vain
to his confessor ; and then applied to the magis-
trates, who gave me two men as a guard in my
house, and instituted an inquiry into the matter.
Saint Saulieu fled from Lille, and went to Ghent,
where he found one of my girls, esteemed very
devout, and a pattern of perfection ; he lived with
her, and at last she became pregnant. This affair
at Lille was arranged through the intervention of
a brother, who belonged to the order of the Je-
suits. They employed their friends, and he was
let off by paying the costs of the law, and retracting
his calumnies, and acknowledging that I was an
honest girl *."
This took place between 1653 and 1658, conse-
quently only a few years before the representation
of Moliere's Tartuffe, who wrote the three first acts
in 1664. Everything favours the belief that the
adventure was by no means a rare one at this
period. Tartuffe, Orgon, all the characters of this
truly historical piece, are not abstract beings, pure
creations of art, like the heroes of Corneille or
Racine ; they are real men drawn from life.
What strikes us in the Flemish Tartuffe of
Mademoiselle de Bourignon, is his patience in
studying and learning the mystics, in order to
speak in their language ; and the perseverance
with which he accommodated himself during
several years to the thoughts of the pious girl.
If Moliei-e had not been restricted to so narrow
* I have abridged and blended the two narratives of
Mademoiselle de Bourignon. See her works, t. i. p. 68 — SO,
and 188—197. (Amsterdam, a.d. 1686.)
a canvass, if his Tartuffe had had the time better to
prepare his approaches, and if he had been able
(too dangerous a thing no doubt) to assume the
cloak of Desmarets, and of budding Quietism, he
would have pushed on his works nearer the be-
sieged place before he was discovered. He would
not, almost at the outset, have made to the person
he desired to seduce the least seductive of all
confessions, that is to say, that ho was an impostor.
He would not have hazarded the words, " If it
be only Heaven—" (Act iv. scene v.) Instead of
abruptly mimasking this hideous corruption, he
would have glossed it over, and unveiled it by
degrees. From quibble to quibble, by artful
transitions, he would have caused con-uption to
seem perfection. Who knows but that, like many
others, he might at last have found hypocrisy to be
unnecessary, and have ended by deceiving himself,
seducing himself, and fancying himself a saint ?
Then would he, in a supreme degree, have been
a Tartuffe, being it not for the world alone, but
for Tartuffe himself, having completely confounded
within himself all perception of good, and reposing
in the arms of evil with all the security of an igno-
rance at first voluntary, but in the end natural.
CHAPTER Vn.
APPEARANCE OF MOLINOS, A.D. 1675; HIS SUCCESS AT
ROME. — FRENCH aUlETISTS. — MADAME GU\0N ; HER
DIRECTOR. — The Torrents. — mystic death. — can we
RETURN FROM IT !
The Spiritual Guide of Molinos appeared in Rome,
in 1675. The public mind having been prepared
to receive it by various publications of the same
tendency during the previous twenty years, all
highly approved of by the inquisitors of Rome and
Spain, this book had so signal a success, that
in twelve years it was translated and reprinted
twenty times *.
We must not be surprised if this guide to an-
nihilation, this way to die, was received with such
avidity. There existed throughout Europe an im-
mense feeling of weariness. The century, still far
from an end, already desired rest. This appeared
in its doctrines. Cartesianism, which gave it the
impulse, became inactive and contemplative in
Mallebranche (1674). Spinosa, from 1670, had
announced the immobility of God, man, and the
world in the unity of substance. In 1676 Hobbes
produced his theory of political fatalism.
Spinosa, Hobbes, and Molinos, — death in meta-
physics, death in politics, in morals. What a
lugubrious chorus ! They agree without knowing
each other, without seeing each other ; they seem
to answer one another from one end of Europe to
the other !
Poor human liberty has no chance but suicide;
whether in the north it suffers itself to be driven
by logic into the abyss of Spinosa, whether in the
south, lured by the soft voice of Molinos, she falls
into slumber in the Maremma, never to wake
again,
* This is the testimony of his enthusiastic admirer, the
archbishop of Palermo (Latin Translation, 1687).
28
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
The age is, nevertheless, in its glory, in all its
triumph. Time is wanting for these thoughts of
discouragement and death to pass from theories
into facts, and for politics to participate in this
moral languor.
Delicate moment, interesting in every life, be-
tween the period of growing power, and the still
bi'illiant age, when the energy declines, and the
descent imperceptibly begins; as in the month of
August, though the trees preserve all their leaves,
they soon begin to change their hue, more than one
has lost its bloom, and in theii- splendid summer
you discover the traces of their autumn.
Already, for some time, an impure and feverish
wind had been blowing from the south, from Italy,
from Spain; Italy was too lifeless, too deeply entomb-
ed in the sepulchre, even to be able to produce a
doctrine of death. It w.as a Spaniard, established at
Rome, imbued with Italian languor, who invented
this theory, and can-ied it out into a practical
method. Still his disciples were obliged to compel
him to write and to publish. During twenty years,
Molinos had been satisfied with sowing silently his
doctrine through Rome ; gently he bore it from
palace to palace. The theology of repose became
marvellously well the city of the catacombs, that
silent city where little else was heard before " but
a slight rustling of the worms in the sepulchre."
When the Spaniard came to Rome, she was
but just emancipated from the effeminate pontificate
of Madame Olympia. The Society of Jesus itself
slumbered in the delicate hands of the general,
Oliva, amidst magnificent vines, exotic flowers,
lihes and roses. It was to these voluptuous Ro-
mans, to the idle nobility, to those fair idlers, who
couch the livelong day with eyes half closed, that
Molinos towards evening came to speak. — Must we
say speak ? that low, dumb, voice, if I may use the
figure, is confounded by them, in their half slumber,
with their inward dreams.
Quietism took a wholly different character in
France. In a living nation, the theory of death
showed signs of life. An infinite degree of activity
was employed to prove that it was unnecessary to
act. This did the doctrine hai-m. Noise and light
wei'e pernicious to it. The friend of darkness, the
delicate plant wished to grow up in the shade.
Without speaking of the chimerical Desmarets,
who would only cast ridicule upon an opinion,
Malaval seemed to perceive that Christianity was
set aside by the new doctrine. On the subject of
the saying of Jesus, " I am the way," a remarkable
phrase for this century escaped him. " Since he
is the way, let us pass by him ; but he who is always
passing, never arrives at his destination *."
Our French Quietists, in their lucid analyses, in
their rich and fecund developments, revealed for the
first time, what was scarcely guessed under the
obscure form that Quietism had prudently preserved
in other countries. Many things, which seemed to
be still in the germ, or scarcely sketched, appeared
full blown in Madame Guyon ; it was a com-
plete light, a sun in full mid-day. The singular
purity of this woman rendered her fearless in ex-
pounding of the most dangerous ideas. Her ima-
• Malaval, Pratique Facile, 1670. The first part has al-
ready lieen printed twice.
t See her life, written by herself vCoIogne, 1720) t. i p.
80. " My prayer was thenceforward void of all forms, spe-
cies, and images." See also t. i. p. 83, against visions.
gination was as pure as her motives were disinte-
rested. She never required to represent the object
of her pious love • under a material form. This is
what raises her mysticism far above the gross and
sensual devotions of the Sacred Heart, begun by the
Visitandine Marie Alacoque, about the same time.
Madame Guyon was too spiritual to conceive her
God under any outward form ; she, in truth, loved
a spirit. Hence, her unlimited confidence and
boldness. She takes bravely, without suspecting
that she is brave, the most dangerous steps, she
goes high and low into the most secluded places.
Where all the world is frightened, and stops, she
continues to proceed, penetrating like the light that
illumines every thing, without ever sullying itself.
This boldness, innocent in so pure a woman,
had nevertheless an evil effect upon the weak-
minded. Her confessor, the Father Lacombe,
was shipwrecked in this abyss, was engulphed
and pei-ished. Her person and her doctrine had
equally troubled him. All that we know of his re-
lations with her, betrays a strange weakness which
she scarcely seems, from the heights which she
occupied, to have condescended to notice. From
the first time he saw hex-, still young, still married,
and taking care of her aged husband, he was so
struck to the heart, that he fainted. Becoming
her humble disciple, under the name of director,
he followed her every where in her adventurous
life in France and Savoy. He never quitted
her more than a step, and could not dine without
her. He even got her likeness surreptitiously taken.
AiTested at the same time with her, in 1687,
he was ten years imprisoned in the fortresses of
the Pyrenees. In 1698, advantage was taken of
the weakness of his mind to make him write a
letter to IMadame Guyon * calculated to compro-
mise her reputation ; " The poor man," she said
with a laugh, " is gone mad." He was so much so,
that a few days afterwards he died at Charenton.
His folly astonishes me but little when I read
the Torrents of Madame Guyon, that wild book, at
once charming and terrible. I must say a word
upon it.
When she wrote it she was at Annecy, in the
convent of the New Converts. She had left her
wealth to her family, and the little annuity she had
reserved for herself was also bestowed on this re-
ligious house, where she was very badly treated.
This delicate woman, who had passed her life in
the midst of luxury, was compelled to put her
hands to labour much above her strength — wash-
ing and sweeping. Father Lacombe, then at Rome,
had recommended her to write every thing that
came into her mind. " In order to obey," said
' she, " I am about to begin writing about what I
do not myself know." She took a quire of paper
and wrote as a heading the word Les Torrents.
" As Alpine torrents, streams, rivulets, and rivers,
and all the waters that flow therefrom, rush with
all their strength towards the sea, so our souls, by
the bent of their spiritual inclination, hasten to re-
turn and lose themselves in God.'' — This comparison
of living waters, does not merely constitute a
text which serves as a starting-point ; she fullows
it out, almost through the whole volume, with an
ever renewed elegance. It would seem as though
* See the correspondence of Bossuet, the Relation of Phe-
lippeaux, &c.
THE TORRENTS.— MYSTIC DEATH.
29
this amiable prattling would ia the long run tire ;
but no such thing.
The truth is that this flow of language is not
that of the tongue, but springs from the heart.
She is evidently an unlearned woman ; she has only
read the Imitation, the Philothea of St. Fran9ois,
and a few tales, and Don Quixote. She knows no-
thing whatever ; she has seen very little. These
very Torrents she describes are not seen in the
part of the Alps in which she is at present placed ;
she beholds them within herself ; she contemplates
nature in the mirror of the heart.
While reading this book, we absolutely seem to
stand on the edge of the cascade, and clearly to
hear the murmuring of the waters. They fall for
ever and for ever with softness, with an inexpres-
sible charm, varying their monotony by a thou-
sand shades of noise and light. Thence you be-
hold waters flow of every sort (images of human
souls), rivers satisfied with attaining other rivers,
streams which flow towards the sea, but slowly ;
grand majestic streams, ladenwith travellers, boats,
and merchandize, which are admired and blessed
for the services they render to mankind (these
streams are the souls of saints and great doctors).
There ax'e besides more rapid, more hurried waters,
which are good for nothing; which rush and hasten
forward, so impatient are they to reach the great
ocean. These waters have terrible falls and some-
times grow muddy and impure ; sometimes they dis-
appear— ah, poor stream, what has become of you ?
It is not yet lost, it I'egains the surface, but only
to be lost once more : it is far from having reached
its destination ; it must first be broken by rocks,
dispersed, almost annihilated.
When she has brought her torrent to this su-
preme fall, the comparison of living waters fails her;
she leaves it, and the torrent becomes a soul once
more. No image from nature could express what
this soul is about to suffer. A strange drama
begins, where it seems no one had ventured up to
this time — that of mystic death. In preceding works,
it is true, a word is here and tliere found upon
this gloomy subject. But no one as yet had pene-
trated so far into the depths of the tomb, the
deep pit in which the soul is about to bury itself.
Madame Guyon seems to take a pride in persevering
with a kind of enthusiasm in searching still lower
and lower, in order to find beyond the limits of all
funereal ideas, a more definitive decease, a death
more like death.
There are in it many things one would by no
means expect to find in the production of a woman,
— a delirium of passion, outstepping all reserve.
That soul about to perish, is divested by the divine
lover of all her ornaments, the gifts that adorned
her; he tears off" her raiment; that is to say, all the
virtues in which she had enshrouded herself. Oh
shame ! she beholds herself naked, and knows not
where to hide ! Even this is not enough, — her
beauty is taken from her. Oh horror ! she beholds
herself ugly. Startled and timid, she runs on and
becomes loathsome. The faster she runs on towards
God, " the more deep she plunges in the miry places
through which- she has to pass." Poor, naked,
hideous, and dirty, she loses all taste for every
thing, understanding, memory, will ; in fine, to-
gether witli her will, she loses a something dear to
her, which would console her for every tiling (the
idea that she is the child of God) ; this, properly
speaking, is the death to which llie soul is destined
to arrive. Let no one, neither director nor any
other, assist her. She must die ; she must be
buried ; she must be trampled and walked upon;
she must decay, putrify, and emit the smell, the
foetid odour of a'corpse, until putrefaction becoming
ashes and dust, scarcely any thing i-emains to recall
to mind that the soul has ever existed.
What was once the soul may think, if it
still thinks, that nothing remains for it but to
rest immovable in the bosom of the earth. But,
behold, it has nevertheless experienced a sur-
prising feeling. Can it be that the sun, through a
chink in the tomb, has let fall a ray of light ? For
an instant, perhaps ? No, the effect lasts; the dead
is warmed ; it feels again a sort of vigour, a sort of
life. But this is no longer its own life ; it is the
life of God. It no longer possesses any thing of its
own, neither will nor desire. What has it to do in
order to become possessed of what it loves ? No-
thing, nothing, and always nothing. In this state
can it commit faults \ Doubtless, it has failings,
and it knows what they are, but makes no endea-
vour to shake them off"*. In order to do this, it
would have, as formerly, to busy itself with its
own self. " They are little clouds, which it should
suffer to disperse of themselves. The soul now has
God for its soul ; henceforward he is its principle
of life ; he is one and identical with her. There is
nothing extraordinary in this state. No visions, re-
velations, ecstasies, or transports. Nothing of the
kind occurs in this state which is simple, pure,
and naked ; seeing nothing but in God, as God sees
himself, and through his eyes."
The book ends thus, after so many dangerous and
immoral things, with a singular purity, which the
greater number of mystics have not even ap-
proached. A sweet revival, without vision or
ecstasy ; a divinely, clear, and serene sight becomes
the portion of the soul which lias traversed all the
degrees of death.
According to Madame Guyon, that bruised,
soiled, and broken life, will awake again in God.
He who has endured all the horrors of the sepulchre;
who, from a living being, has become a corpse ;
who has held communion with worms ; who, become
putrid matter, is fallen to the state of dust and
ashes — even he can aseume life again, and bloom
once more in the sun.
What less susceptible of belief ? less conformable
to nature ? She deceives herself, and deceives us by
an equivocation. The life she promises to us after
this death, is not our own ; to our stifled, anni-
hilated, departed personality, another will succeed,
infinite and perfect, I will allow ; but, in fine, it is
not ourselves.
I had not read the Torrents, when all tliis, for
the first time, struck me. I was ascending St.
Gothard, and was advancing to meet that violent
Reuss which rushes down the mountain with so im-
petuous a course. I participated in imagination
with the frightful labour by which it pierces through
the i-ocks that sun-ound it, and presents a barrier
to its passage. I was frightened at its falls, at the
efforts which it seemed to make, like a poor soul
in trouble, to fly from itself, hide and behold itself
no more. It absolutely writhes at the Devil's
• Madame Guyon, Les Torrents, (Opuscules, Cologne,
1701,) p. 291.
30
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
Bridge, and just at the point where it makes a turn
in the midst of these convulsions, thi'own from an
immense height to the bottom of the abyss, it
ceases for a time to be a river, and becomes a
tempest between heaven and earth, a glacial vapour,
a frightful wind of spray, which darkens the sombre
valley. Ascend higher, and still higher. You tra-
verse a cavern, you pass an excavated rock. And
now the noise ceases ; the grand strife is over ;
peace and silence is there. And life ? Does it be-
gin again ? After this shock of death, do you dis-
cern new life ? Withered are the meadows, no more
flowers, the grass is scanty and poor; nothing living
is stirring ; not a bird in the heavens, not an insect
on the earth. You may behold the sun, it is true,
but without rays, without heat.
CHAPTER VIII.
FENELON AS DIRECTOR ; HIS auiETiSM. — Maxims of the
Saints, A.D. 1697. — fenelon and Madame de la mai-
SONFORT.
Madame Guvon apparently was not the extravagant
and chimerical person her enemies make her out;
since, on arriving in Paris from Savoy, she knew
how to gain over and secure the man most capable
of making her doctrines relished, a man of genius,
who, besides, possessed an infinite degree of ability
and tact; and who, above these merits, possessed
that which, in case of need, stands in lieu of all
merit, being just then the fashionable director.
To this new Chantal, a Saint Francois de Sales
was wanting,— she found him in Fe'ne'lon, less severe,
less innocent, it is true, less refulgent with infancy
.and seraphic grace; but singularly noble and re-
fined, subtle, eloquent, reserved, very devout and
very politic *.
She laid her hand upon him, seized him, and
easily carried him along with her. That good
and noble spirit, which contained every thing, and
every contradiction, might probably have floated
for ever, without this jjowerful impulse which
steered it in one direction. Until then he had
vacillated between conflicting opinions, between
opposite parties and bodies ; so that every one
claimed him as their own, and thought he was
indeed so. The assiduous courtier of Bossuet,
whose disciple he called himself, and whom he
scarcely quitted in his retreat at Meaux, he was
no less the friend of the Jesuits ; and between the
two, lie clung firmly to Saint Sulpice. In his
theology inclining by turns to grace, and to free-will,
imbued with the old mysticisms, and full of pre-
sentiments of the eighteenth century, he seems
to have had, under his faith, some corners of
scepticism, which he took care not to fathom.
All these diverse elements, without being able to
amalgamate, harmonized outwardly into the most
elegant and graceful undulations of the finest
spirit that ever existed. Greek and Christian,
by turns, he reminds us at one and the same time
of the fathers, the philosophers, and the romancers,
of the Alexandrine epoch; and, at times, behold on
• See the learned Tabaraud (Supplement to the History of
Bossuet, 1832), and the very shrewd and judicious estimate
of his character made by two excellent critics. M. Monty
(DeM. leDuc de Bourgogne), and M. Thomas {Une province
sous Louis XIV.).
a sudden the sophist become a prophet, soaring
in some sermon on the wings of Isaiah.
Every thing favours the belief, that the astonish-
ing writer formed the least part of Fe'ne'lon, he was
pre-eminently the iJirector. Who can explain by
what enchantment he seized and captivated souls 1
It is perceived in the infinite charm of his corre-
spondence, mutilated as it is *: no other has been
so cruelly mutilated and purposely obscured. Well,
in these fragments, in these scattered remains, the
seductive power is still strong ; besides the nobility
of form, the lively and fine expression, where the
man of high breeding is distinctly perceived under
the apostle, there is that which belongs alone to him ;
a feminine delicacy, which by no means excludes
force, and even in his sophistry a tenderness which
finds its way to the heart. When quite a young man,
before he became the tutor of M. le Due de Bour-
gogne, he had long directed the New Converts.
There he had leisure to study woman, and to ac-
quire that perfect knowledge of their hearts, which
none but himself possessed. The passionate in-
terest which they took in his fate, the tears of
the little flock, of the duchesses of Chevreuse and
Beauvilliers, &c., when he missed being appointed
archbishop of Paris; their persevering faithfulness
to their beloved guide, during his exile at Cambray,
which lasted until death — all this supplies the
place of the letters that are lost, and gives a
strange idea of the all-powerful magician, whose
invincible enchantment nothing could destroy.
To introduce so refined, so high a spirituality,
such a pretension to supreme perfection, into this
conventional, ceremonious world of Versailles, and
this at the end of a reign in which all seemed
frozen, was a hardy enterprise ! It was not
now his business, like Madame Guyon in the
solitude of the Alps, to abandon himself to the
torrents of divine love. The semblance of sense,
the forms of reason, were to be infused even into
the madness of love ; it was necessary, as the
ancient comic writer says, to be mad according to
rule and measure. This is what Fe'n^lon did in his
" Maximes des Saintes." The condemnation of
Molinos and the imprisonment of Madame Guyon
at Vinctnnes were sufficient warning for him ; he
declared himself, but prudently, and preserved, in
the very form of his decision, a slight remains of
indecision.
Nevertheless, with all his ability, his tact, and
his windings, if he differs from the extreme
Quietists, whom he affects to condemn, it is less
on account of the basis of the doctrine, than of the
degree in which he admits the doctrine. He
fancies he does a great deal by saying that the
state of quietude in which the soul loses its ac-
tivity, is not a perpetuaUij, but an habitually passive
state. In acknowledging inaction as superior to
action, and as a perfect state, does he not suggest
the wish that this inaction should be everlasting ?
That soul, habitually passive, according to
him, concentrates itself on high, leaving below the
inferior portion, whose acts are the result of
a wholly blind and involuntary will. These acts
being always assumed to be voluntary, he confesses
• A bishop, at the time Inspector of the university, has
boasted in presence of myself and of several other persons,
who would testify to the fact if necessary, that he had
burnt some of Fenelon's letters.
FENELON AND MADAME DE LA MAISONFORT.
31
that the superior portion is responsible for them.
Of course, then, this said part will regulate them.
By no means; it is absorbed in its exalted quietude.
What, .then, will supply its place? What will pre-
vent confusion in that lower sphere to which the
soul descends no more ? He says expressly — it
is the Director ! *
Although in theory he modifies Molinos, this is
less important than it seems to be. The specu-
lative side of the question which occupies Bossuet
so much, is not the most essential in a point where
practice is so directly interested. What is really
serious is that Fe'ne'lon, as well as Molinos, after hav-
ing erected a great scaffolding of rules, has not
enough of these rules ; every moment he calls in
the aid of a director. He establishes a system,
but that system cannot go alone ; the hand of man
is wantini;. This inert theory exacts from time to
time the supplement of a special consultation, of an
empirical expedient. The director is for the
soul like a supplementary soul, who, while it sleeps
on the mountain, rules and conducts every thing
for it in this wretched world below, which is after
all that of reality.
Man then, always man ! this is what you find
at the bottom of their doctrines, when you examine
and scrutinize them. It is the ultima ratio of their
systems. Such is their theory, such also is their
life.
I leave these illustrious adversaries, F^ndon
and Bossuet, to fight about ideas. I prefer observ-
ing their practice. Here, I perceive the doctrine
to be little, but man much. Quietists and Anti-
Quietists do not essentially differ in their method
of wrapping up the soul, and stifling the will.
Under the battle even of theories, before it
began, there was a personal one very singular to
mark. The stake of the combat, if I dare so to
speak, the spiritual conquest contended for by the
two parties, was a woman, a charming soul, full
of impulse and youth, of imprudent vivacity, and
naive uprightness f . She was a niece of Madame
Guyon's, a young lady who was called Madame
(for she was a canoiiess) de la Maisonfort. This
lady, noble and poor, ill-treated by a step-mother
and a newly married father, had fallen into the
cold political hands of Madame de Maintenon. Whe-
ther through the vanity of founding, or as a means of
amusing a king difficult to amuse, she was then erect-
ing St. Cyr, for daughters of the nobility. She knew
that the king was susceptible as regarded women,
and did not permit him to see any but old ones and
children. The pupils of St. Cyr, who by their
innocent pastimes delighted the old man's eyes, re-
called to him a former time, and afforded him a
sweet and harmless opportunity of showing a pa-
ternal gallantry.
Madame de Maintenon, who owed, as is well
known, her singular good fortune to an attractive
combination of qualities that, after all, were only
of an ordinary description, sought for somebody of
eminently ordinary talents, if I may so speak, to
govern the house. She could not do better than
seek him amongst the Sulpicians and the Lazarists.
* Maximes des Saints, article 14 ; and 8, 20, 39, 4.
+ What a singular destiny was that of the young girl
whose tears Racine one day dried up (she played Elise in
Esther), and whom Feuelon and Bossuet caused to shed so
many tears! See M. de Noaille's Saint Cyr. p. 113 (1843).
The Sulpician Godet, whom she chose for her own
director, and as director of St. Cyr, was a clever
pedant ; such at least is the definition given of him
by St. Simon, who had some opinion of him ; and
Madame de Maintenon beheld in him the dry and
literal priest, who could protect her against every
eccentricity. With such a person she could sleep
in peace. To the two men of genius who governed
at St. Cyr, the Jansenist Racine and the Quietist
F^ne'lon *, she preferred Godet.
Even if this story were not known, the mere
sight of St. Cyr would at once convict it of having
been the domicile of ennui. The soul of the foun-
der, that soul of a governess, is every where felt.
One yawns, only whilst looking at it . . . still, if
the building were but sad, sadness itself is a food
for the soul. But no ; it is not sad, neither is it
gay: there is nothing to be said against it. Hav-
ing neither character nor style, it presents no
mark for attack. To what period does the chapel
belong ? It is not Gothic, it does not belong
to the Revival, it is not even of the Jesuit
style. But then it displays perhaps the Jansenist
severity ? It is not by any means austere. — What
is it then 1 Nothing. But that nothing has a
power of ennui not to be found elsewhere.
After the first moment, half devout, half worldly,
of the representations of Athaiie and Esther,
which the young girls had only acted but too well,
the school was reformed, and became a kind of con-
vent. Instead of Racine, it was the Abbe' Pellegrin
and Madame de Maintenon who wrote the pieces for
Saint Cyrf. The teachers were required to be
nuns. These great changes displeased even Louis
XIV. himself, and perilled the existence of the new
establishment. Madame de Maintenon seems to
have felt this ; and accordingly she sought as the
corner stone of her hiiUdinij, a living stone, alas ! a
woman, full of grace and life.— It was poor Maison-
fort who was driven to be immured, cloistered, and
hidden in the foundation of St. Cyr.
But she who was all-powerful, found her power
powerless here. Lively and independent as La
Maisonfort was, all the kings and queens in the
world would have failed in forcing her to this.
The heart alone, ably handled, would lead her
whither any one desired. Madame de Maintenon,
who ardently desired the thing, made an effort to
accomplish it which, when we read her letters, ap-
pears surprising. This reserved person here quits
her character; she confides in order to gain confi-
dence, and does not fear to confess to the youn^ girl
whom she desires to disgust with tlie worldf that
she, having occupied the first place in the whole
world, " is dying of melancholy and ennui."
But what was much more efficacious, was that
they employed about lier a new director, seductive,
charming, and irresistible. The Abbe' Fe'ne'lon, was
then upon good terms with Madame de Maintenon:
he dined with her every Sunday at the house of
the duchesses de Beauvilliers and de Chevreuse,
alone with them, without servants, and waiting on
themselves, in order not to be overheard. The
attraction of this singular man was a great temp-
• " Either Racine, in speaking to you of Jansenism, would
have led you into it, or M. de Cambray," &c. Letters of
Madame de Maintenon, ii. 190. ed. 1757.
t Unpublished Proverbs of Madame de Maintenon, 1S29.
See also her Conversations, 1828, and her Spirit of the Insti-
tution of the Daughters of St. Louis, 1808.
32
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
tation to La Maisonfort, and a voice that spoke
with authority commanded her to follow that
attraction. " See the Abbe' Fene'lon," Madame
de Maintenon writes to her; "accustom yourself
to live with him *."
Agreeable command, which slie obeyed only too
well ; with such a man, who invested every thing
with his own individual charm, who rendered easy,
and simplified the most difficult things, one walked
no longer, but flew between heaven and earth, in
the warm regions of divine love. So much seduction,
so much at once of sanctity and freedom — it was
too much for her poor heart!
Saint Simon relates by what spying and treachery
Godet discerned in St. Cyrtlie presence of Quietism.
So much cunning was not required, La Maisonfort
was pure enough to be imprudent. In the happi-
ness of that new spirituality in which her whole
soul was centered, she avowed even more than
they wished her to avow.
Fe'ne'lon, suspected as he was then becoming,
was allowed to remain with her, until she had taken
the grand stej). They waited until she had, through
his influence, in spite of her beseeching and tears,
taken the veil, and allowed the fatal grate to close
behind her.
Two councils were held at St. Cyr to resolve
on the fate of the victim. Godet, assisted by the
Lazarists, Thiberge and Brisacier, decided that she
should become a nun; and Fe'nelon, who formed
part of this fine council, said nothing against it.
She herself relates that during the deliberation,
" she retired before the holy sacrament in a state
of strange anguish ; she thought she should die
of grief, and shed in her chamber all the night
long floods of tears."
The deliberation was a mere form; Madame de
Maintenon ordained, and all that remained was to
obey. None at this time depended more upon her
thanFe'ndlon. It was the decisive crisis of Quietism.
The question was to know whether its doctor, its
writer, its prophet, no great favourite with the
king, who, however, knew as yet but little of him,
could acquire in the church, before the doctrine
burst forth, the position of a great prelate, to which
all his friends were striving to raise him. Thence
resulted his unbounded devotion to Madame de
Maintenon, and thence the sacrifice of poor Maison-
fort to their all-powerful will. F^ndlon, who per-
fectly well knew her disinclination to the vocation,
immolated her, not, doubtless, to his own persona!
interests, but to the advancement of his doctrines
and the aggrandizement of his party.
As soon as she was veiled and cloistered past
recall, he absented himself little by little. Too frank,
and too imprudent, she did much harm to his doc-
trine, already widely attacked. He did not desire
such compromising friendships. He wanted poli-
tical stays. He addressed himself to the Jesuits
as a last resource, and took a Jesuit confessor; they
had had the prudence to have some of both parties.
To fall from Fendcm to Godet, to return under
his dry and harsh direction, was more than the
new nun could bear. On day when he came with
the little constituticms and little minute rules, which,
in concert with Madame de Maintenon, he had
drawn up, La Maisonfort could not contain herself;
• Letter quoted by Phelippeaux, History of Quietism,
i. 43.
and before him, and before her all-powerful found-
ress, she boldly avowed the contempt in which she
held him. A little while after, a lettre de cachet ex-
pelled her harshly from St. Cyr.
She had made only too stout a defence against Go-
det and Brisacier, and the rest of this hostile crew.
Abandoned by Fe'nelon, she strove to remain faith-
ful to his doctrines, and persevered in retaining his
books. It was found necessary, in order to subdue
this rebel, to call in the aid of the great power of the
time — Bossuet. But she would not receive his advice
until after she had consulted with Fe'ne'lon, whether
she might do so. To this last mark of confidence,
he answers, I regret to say, by a dry and poor
letter*, in which jealousy is only too strongly
revealed, along with regret at beholding her whom
he had failed to defend pass under the influence
of another.
CHAPTER IX.
BOSSUET AS DIRECTOR. — BOSSUET AND SISTER CORNUAU.
— HEP. FRANKNESS AND IMPRUDENCE. — HE IS A
QUIETIST IN PRACTICE — DEVOUT DIRECTION INCLINES
TO aulETISM. — MORAL PARALYSIS. •
Nothing throws a clearer light on the true na-
ture of direction than the correspondence of the
most worthy and most loyal of directors ; I mean
Bossuet. Experience is decisive ; if the results are
bad, it is the method and the system we must ac-
cuse, and not the man.
Greatness of genius, and nobility of character,
kept Bossuet aloof from the petty passions of the
common set of directors, from their trifles, jealous-
ies, and worrying tyranny. We may believe this
on the faith of one of his own penitents. Without
disapproving, she says, of those directors who regu-
late the most trifling thoughts and nffectiotis, he did
not admire the practice, with respect to those souls
who loved God and had made some progress in spi-
ritual life-f-.
His correspondence is dignified, noble, and serious.
You will not discover there the too caressing ten-
derness of St. Franjois de Sales, and still less the
refinements and persevering subtilties of Fe'ne'lon.
Less austere than the letters of St. Cyran, those
of Bossuet resemble them in their gravity. They
possess often an oratorical grandeur out of keeping
with the very commonplace person to whom for
the most part they are addi'essed; but which pos-
sessed the advantage of keeping her at a distance,
and preventing even in the most confidential tete-a-
tete too intimate familiarities.
If this correspondence has come down to us more
entire than that of Fe'nelon, we owe the circum-
stance (at least the most curious part of it) to the
worship which one of Bossuet's penitents, the good
widow Cornuau, preserved for his memory. This
worthy woman, in transmitting us his letters, has
faithfully preserved their details, humiliating enough
for herself. She forgot her own vanity, and thought
only of the glory of her spiritual father. In this
her attachment happily guided her well. She has
* It is contained entire in Phelippeaux, i. 161. "It is
not a sign of good health when one stands in need of so
many physicians," &c.
t Works of Bossuet, Avertissement de la soeur Cornuau,
xi. 300 (ed. Lefevre, 1836).
BOSSUET AND SISTER CORNUAU.
33
done for him perhaps more than any panegyrist
could have done. These noble letters, written
and never intended for the light of day, in profound
secresy, are worthy of being laid before the world.
The good widow tells us that when she was suffi-
ciently happy to visit him in his retirement at
Meaux, he received her sometimes " in a small,
very cold and very smoky spot." This appa-
rently was the little summer house, shown to this
day, at the end of the garden, on the old ram-
part of the town, which forms the terrace of the
episcopal palace. The valet, whose busmess it
was to call Bossuet at an early hour, slept in a
small attic above the study which forms the ground-
floor. A sombre and narrow alley uf yews and
holly leads to this gloomy apartment ; old, dwarfed,
stunted trees which have been continually inter-
mingling their knotty branches, and black and
prickly leaves. Dreams of the past dwell for ever
there ; you may still find there all the thorns of
those great polemics, now so far removed from us,
the disputes of Jurieu and Claude, and the haughty
history of the Variations, and the mortal combats
of Quietism envenomed by the betrayal of friend-
ship. Over the silent gai'den, with its straight,
formal paths in the French style, rises in its soft
majesty, the cathedral tower ; but you cannot be-
hold it from the little dark alley, nor from the
gloomy chamber, that secluded, cold, uninviting
spot, which, in spite of the grand recollections
associated with it, chills the heart, and reminds us
that this fine-minded man, the best pi'iest of his
day, was still a priest.
There was only one point by which this domi-
neering spirit could be reached, duty and obedience.
Here, the good Cornuau surpassed liis utmost ex-
pectations. She displays an infinite degree of both,
and you perceive that she hides still moi-e, for fear
of giving offence. She prided herself, as much as
her natui'al mediocrity would permit, in following
the tastes and ideas of this great man. He pos-
sessed the spirit of governing ; she also possessed
it in a slighter degree. She undertook to conduct
the affairs of the community in which she resided ;
anil, at the same time, she was winding up those
of her family. She then waited fifteen years ere
she was permitted to become a nun. She at length
obtained this favour, and caused herself to be
called the sister de Saint Binhjne, taking also,
a little boldly, j)erhaps, the name of Bossuet.
The actual cares, in the performance of which
the wise director long retained her, jjroduced an
excellent effect upon her, by amusing and calming
her imagination. Hers was an impassioned, hon-
est, but vulgar mind, and, unhappily, she had
sense enough to confess to herself what she was.
She knows and she tells herself, that she is only a
commoner, that she lias neither birth, nor talent, nor
grace, nor experience ; she had not even seen Ver-
sailles ! How could she bear comparison, in his
estimation, with those clever girls, and fine ladies,
brilliant even in their penances and voluntary sub-
missions. It seemed as though, at first, she had
aimed at excelling them in other ways, and at
raising herself above them by the path of mysticism.
She ventures one day to have visions, and wrote one,
poor enough in fancy, which Bossuet did not
praise. What is to be done ? Nature has refused
her wings, and she pei'ceives that decidedly she
cannot fly. She has, at least, no pride ; she does
not seek to hide the unhappy state of her heart ;
this humiliating confession escapes her, " that she
is bui'sting with jealousy."
What is very touching is, that the confession
once made, this poor gentle and good creature,
sacrifices herself, and turns sick nurse to her who
had aroused her jealousy, and who was then at-
tacked by a frightful disease. She follows lier to
Paris, shuts herself up with her, takes care of her,
and loves her, for the very reason, perhaps, which
before produced just the contrary effect, — because
she was beloved by Bossuet.
La Cornuau evidently deceives herself in this
jealousy ; it was herself who was preferred ; we
perceive it now by comparing several correspond-
ences. For her he reserved all paternal indul-
gences ; for her sake he seems, at times, to have
softened his nature, as much as his ordinary gra-
vity would permit. This man, so deeply occupied,
finds time to write to her more than two hundred
letters. He is certainly more firm, more austere,
with the noble lady of whom she was jealous. He
becomes brief, almost harsh, towards her, when it
is necessary to reply to the somewhat confidential
communications which she perseveres in making to
him. He defers his answers indefinitely (" when ]
have plenty of leisure"); until then, he forbids her to
write on such subjects, or, he " would burn her let-
ters without ever reading them." (24th November,
1691.) He elsewhei-e nobly says, of these delicate
subjects which may trouble the imagination, that
when compelled to speak of such matters, and to
listen to them, " one ought to touch the earth only
with the point of the foot."
This perfect honesty, which will not listen to
anything evil, causes him to forget sometimes that
it does exist, and puts him off his guard. Relying
on liis age, rather advanced at that time, he, at
certain moments, permits himself to be carried
away by certain impulses of mystical love, suffi-
ciently dangerous before a witness so impassioned
as Cornuau. In the presence of simple submissive
persons, inferior in evei-y way, he fancies himself
alone; and in giving vent to the fervid poetic in-
stinct which he preserved even in his old age, he
hesitates not to make use of the mysterious lan-
guage of the Song of Songs. Sometimes it is to
calm his penitent, to strengthen her chastity, that
he employs this burning language. I dare not
copy the letter, innocent * assuredly, but still most
imprudent, which he writes from his country-
house at Germigny (10 July, 1692), and where he
* Some of my critics have in(Iul{;;ed in the easy pleasure of
refuting what I have not said — of proving tliat Bossuet was an
honest man, &c. Wlio ever said the contrary ? At tlie same
lime, as they do not exactly know what Quietism is (no more
than grace or free will), they cite, tojustify Bossuet from the
charge of Quietism, a text eminently quietist : "Make no
attempt, neither of the head nor of the heart, to unite your-
self with your Bridefiroom." (26th October, 1694 ) What 1
liave said 1 repeat, that the best intentioned director in the
world is still very dangerous ; that his language, dictated
doubtless by a pure intention, is not the less likely to trouble
the flesh. Even when he blames and forbids, he does it ex-
actly in tlie terms most proper to awaken that which he for-
bids. I do not like to contemplate in these moments a
great man, an old man, who in other respects deserves our
esteem. If, however, jiroofs are absolutely required, read
(17th January, 1692), " When the sweet wound of love, &c.'"
(1st June, 1695) : " Dare every thing with the celestial bride-
groom—seize hold of him— I permit you the most violent
34
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES,
explains the meaning of the words of the Bride-
groom, " Support me with flowers, for I languish
for love." Such medicine, which hopes to cure
passion by a still sti'onger passion, is marvellously
well calculated to double the evil.
What is still more surprising even than this
imprudence is, that you often find in the pri-
vate correspondence of this great adversary of
Quietism the greater part of the sentiments and
practical maxims with which the Quietists were
reproached. He delights in expatiating on their
favourite text, Eipcctans eipectaci. " The bride
ought not to be in a hurry ; she ought to wait in ex-
pectation of what the bridegroom will do ; if mean-
while, he fondles the soul, and incline it to caress
him, the heart must be yielded up. The means
of union is union itself. Let the bridegroom act as
lie will, this is the whole duty of the bride.
" Jesus is admirable in the chaste embraces
with which he honours his bride, and renders her
fruitful ; eve7-y virtue is the fruit of these chaste em-
braces." {28 February, 1693.) " A change in
life must follow ; but without the soul's dreaming of
changing itself."
This letter, wholly Quietist, was written the
30th May, 1699, and eight days afterwards*, sad
inconsistency, he writes these unfeeling words
about Madame Guyon. " They appear to me re-
solved to shut her up far from here in a strong
castle," &c.
How is it that he does not perceive, that on
the practical question, very much more important
than theory, he in no wise differs from those whom
he treats so badly ! Quietism in Bossuet, as in
his adversaries, is only the development of the
inert and passive sides of our nature : Expectans
expectavi.
It is a strange sight to see them all, even from
the very heaft of the middle age, cry out against
mysticism, and fall themselves into mysticism. The
declivity must indeed be rapid and inevitable. In
the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the profound
Rusbrock and the great Gerson, imitated those
whom they blamed. In the seventeenth, the Quiet-
ists Bona, Fenelon, Lacombe, even Madame Guyon's
director, speak severely and harshly of the abso-
lute Quietists. All are pointing to the abyss, and
all fall into it.
transports — " (3rd July, 1693.) "Jesus desires that you
should he witli him ; he desires to enjoy, he desires that you
should enjoy him. His holy flesh is the medium of this
union, and this chaste enjoyment," &c. — (14tli May, 1G95.)
"It is in the Holy Eucharist that we enjoy virginally the
body of the bridegroom, and that he appropriates ours." —
(1st June, 169G.) " Embrace freely this dear little brother,
who every day diminishes liimself to unite with us," &c.
If you require anything more personal, see the feeble man-
ner in wliich he repels the tenderness of that noble nun whose
sensual confidence he had declined ; "In truth I would not
excite the tendernesses of the heart direcily, hut when they come
either by themselves or in consequence of other dispositions,
&c., I am not insensible, thank God ! to a certain conformity
of sentiment or of taste. But, allhoiiyh I higlily appreciate
this conformity and all that is felt in relation to me — in
truth it affects me little, and you must not be afraid of
telling me." It appears that the illustrious penitent was
beginning to be afraid of her own sentiments and desired
to take a less loved director : "/ forbid you to adhere to the
temptation to quit, or to believe that I am fatigued or tired
by your conduct." (2')th December, 1C91.)
• CEuvres de Bossvel, \'\. 380. xii. 53. (ed. 183G).
It matters not who are the individuals, there is
a logical fatality. The man, who by his character
and his genius, is the furthest removed from pas-
sive ways, he who in his writings most strongly
condemns them, Bossuet, — in his practice, goes
along with the rest.
What matters it to write against the theory of
Quietism ! Quietism is infinitely less of a system
than a method ; a method of stagnation and indo-
lence which we are always discovering, under one
form or another, in devout direction. It is very
useless to recommend activity, as Bossuet does, or
to permit it, as Fenelon does, if, counteracting in a
soul all exercise of activity, and holding it in leading
strings, you take away from it all habit, taste, and
power to act.
Even if she has the semblance of still acting, is
it not an illusion, if that activity is not her own,
but your's, O Bossuet ? You show me a person
who moves and walks, and I perceive that she
preserves that appearance of movement only be-
cause she bears you within her as the principle
of action, as the cause and reason of life, of
walking, of stirring. There is always, in the total,
the same amount of action; only in this dangerous
connection of the director with the directed, all
action springs from the first ; he alone remains the
active power, a will, a person ; the directed, losing
little by little what constitutes her a person, be-
comes— what ? A machine.
When Pascal, in his superb disdain for reason,
seeks to make us become like beasts* to crush within
us what he calls the automaton and the machine,
he does not perceive that there would simply be an
exchange of reasons : the one having put on a bit
and a bridle, the reason of the other mounts upon
it, rides it and leads it where it lists.
If the automaton preserves any movement, how
shall it be led ? according to the system of proba-
bilities; for the probabilism of the Jesuits prevailed
in the first half of the century . . . Then, the move-
ment being arrested, the paralyzed century learns
of the Quietists that immobility is perfection itself.
The weakness and impotence of the last days of
Louis XIV., was a little concealed by the remains
of a literary splendour. They are not, on that ac-
count, the less deeply seated. It is the natural
consequence, not only of grand efforts which bring
exhaustion, but also of the theories of abnegation,
of impersonality, of systematic nullity, which had
always been victor in this century. By continually
repeating that one could not walk unsupported by
another, there arose a generation who walked not
at all, who boasted of having forgotten movement,
and gloried in it. Madame Guyon, in speaking of
herself, forcibly expresses, in a letter to Bossuet,
the general condition of the human mind at this
period: — "You say, my lord, that there are only
four or five persons who are labouring under this
inability to act for themselves ; but I tell you
there are more than a hundred thousand. When
you told me to ask and to desire, I found myself in
the condition of a paralytic, to whom it is said,
Walk', since you have legs ; the efforts he seeks to
make in order to do this, serve on\y to make him
feel his impotence. They say in ordinary cases,
• Montaigne also says abetir, though not in the cause
of authority ; but in a different sense, and ititention. See
rascal, ed. Faug^re, ii. 168.
THE "GUIDE" OF MOLINOS.
35
Every man who has legs ought to walk *. I believe it,
I know it, and, nevertheless, have them, and I
feel that I cannot make use of them."
CHAPTER X.
THE GUIDE OP MOLINOS; PART WHICH THE DIRECTOR
PLAYS IN IT. — HYPOCRITICAL AUSTERITY; IMMORAL
DOCTRINE. — MOLINOS APPROVED AT ROME, 1675. — MO-
LINOS CONDEMNED AT ROME, 1C87. — HIS MANNERS IN
CONFORMITY WITH HIS DOCTRINE. — THE SPANISH MO-
LINOSISTS. — MOTHER ACUEDA.
For one who cannot move without assistance, for
the poor paralytic, the greatest danger is not to re-
main without movement, but to become the pup-
pet of a movement not his own. The theories
which speak most about immovability are not al-
ways disinterested. Be on your guard and take care.
The work of Molinos, artificial, and the result of
great reflection, possesses a character entirely its
own, and which distinguishes it from the more in-
spired books of the great mystics.
These, such as St. Theresa, often advise one to
obey, not to believe oneself, to submit every thing
to the director. They thus give themselves a
guide, but in their enthusiastic efforts they drag the
guide after them. They fancy they are following
him ; in reality they are leading him. The director
has no other occupation, when in their company, but
to sanction their inspiration f .
The originality of the book of Molinos is alto-
gether the contrary. In it internal activity expires,
there is nothing but foreign action. The director is
the pivot on which the whole book turns; he comes
in at every instant ; and even, when for a moment
he becomes invisible, we find that he is in the back-
ground. He is the guide, or rather the support,
without which this impotent soul cannot take a
single step. He is the ever-present physician, who
decides whether the sick person may taste this or
that. Sick person ? yes, and very sick too, since
every moment another is compelled to think, feel,
and act for it ; indeed, to exist in its stead.
Can sucii a soul be said to live ? Is not this
real death ? The grand mystics sought death, and
could not find it ; their living activity remained
even in the sepulchre ; to die, singly in God, to die
by one's own will, by one's own energy, is not to
die comjiletely. But, slothfuliy, to let one's soul
be absorbed in the wliirlwind of another soul ;
to suffer, in a half dreamy state, the strange trans-
formation in which your own individuality is ah-
* Letter dated 10th February, 1694. (Euvres de Bossuel,
xii. 14. (ed. 1836 ) Compare the sad confessions of the sis-
ter Du Mans. Ibid. xi. 558, 30th March, 1695, and those of
Fenelon even. Sth November, 1700, i. 572. (ed. Didot, 1838.)
t Madame Guyon herself, who has developed better than
any other mystic the theory of death, is dead in the lips, but
always alive in the heart. Even in that ocean "in which
the poor torrent is lost," it preserves its own life, and the
softness of its waters ; so grand is its energy, so power-
ful its impulse, so lofty the hill from which it falls ! The
Rhone pierces through its lake, that unfathomable depth of
waters, and it is still the Rhone when it leaves it. At cer-
tain intervals, the director's name is heard amidst all this.
But who can direct such impetuosity? The poor Pere La-
combe, it is well known, could not guide his bark in it; the
torrent on which he floated carried him away ; he became
mad.
sorbed in his — this is real, moral death. We need
seek for no other.
" To act is the deed of the novice ; to suffer is
immediate gain ; to die is perfection. Let us
advance in darkness, and we shall advance well ;
the horse when it turns with liis eyes blind-
fold, grinds the wheat best. Let us not think,
neither let us read. A practical master will teach
us, better than books, what we ought to do on the
spur of the moment. It is a great security to
have an experienced guide, to govern and teach
us, according to his actual intelligence, and pre-
vent us from being deceived either by the devil or
our own senses*."
Molinos, in softly leading us along this way,
seems to me to know very well whither it leads.
I imagine so by the infinite precautions which he
takes to reassure us ; by the pretensions he always
makes to humility, to austerity, to excessive scru-
pulousness, to exaggerated prudence above all pru-
dence. Saints are not usually so wary.
In a very humble preface he thinks that his
little book, with no pretension to elegance or graces
of style, and without a patron, will meet with no
success. " It will doubtless be criticised; all will
find it so insipid." Still more humbly, in the last
page, he meekly submits it to the correction of the
Holy Roman Church f.
He gives us to understand that the real di-
rector is only director in spite of himself. He is
a man who would hke to be dispensed from the
care of souls, who sighs and longs for solitude. He
is above all very far from desiring the direction of
women ; they are in general too little prepared.
It is necessary that he should be very careful not
to call his penitent, ' my daughter ;' it is too tender
a word ; God is jealous. — Self-love, combined with
passion, that monster with seven heads, sometimes
takes the form of gratitude, of filial affection to-
wards the confessor... He must not go and visit
his penitents at their own homes, even in eases of
sickness, nnless he is summoned J.
What an astonishing strictness, what excessive
precautions,- unknown until the time of Molinos!
What a holy man this is ! — It is true that if the
dii'ector ought not of his own accord to visit this
sick person, he can do so if he is summoned. I
answer for it, she tcill summon him. With such a
direction,- is she not always ill, embarrassed, fearful,
incapable of doing anything of herself? She longs
for him every hour. Every impulse that springs
not from him, may perhaps spring from the devil ;
may not even the pang of remorse, which sometimes
stirs in her, be some soul-enticing snare of the
devil's §?
As soon as he is near her, on the contrary, how
tranquil she becomes ! How he calms her with a
word ! How he resolves all her doubts. — She is
well rewarded for having done nothing of her own
accord, for having waited, obeyed, and still obeyed.
— She now feels that obedience is better than all virtue.
* Molinos' Gaida Spirituals, (Venetia, 1685,) p. 86, 161, et
passim, trad. Latin, Lipsiae, 1687.
t The Guide of Molinos, that celebrated book, is not very
original. It contains few things that are not better treated
in the other Quietists. Read however his enthusiastic eu-
logy on nonentity or nothingness; of which Bossuet has trans-
lated some passages in the third book of his Instruction
sur les Etats d'Oraison.
t The Guide, t. ii. c. 6. § Ibid. c. 17.
D 2
36
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
Well ! Let her be prudent ; she will be led still
further yet. " She must not, if she sins, trouble
herself about the sin. To be annoyed would be a
sign that the leaven of pride was still preserved.
It is the devil, who, to arrest us in the spiritual
path, turns our thoughts upon our backslidings.
Would it not be foolish in one who runs, to stop
when he falls, to cry like a child, instead of pursu-
ing his way ? These falls exercise an excellent
effect in preserving us from pride, which is the
greatest of falls. God makes virtues of our vices,
and these very vices, by the medium of whicli the
devil hoped to plunge us in the abyss, become a ladder
icJierewith to ascend to heaven *.
The doctrine was well received. Molinos had
the tact to publisli at the same time another work,
which might serve as a passport to this, a trea-
tise on the Daily Communion, directed against the
Jansenists, and Arnaud's great work. The Spi-
ritual Guide was examined with such favour as
Rome could grant to the enemy of her enemies.
There was scarcely a single religious order that
did not approve of it. The Roman inquisition
gave it their aj>proval through three of its mem-
bers, a Jesuit, a Carmelite, and the general of the
Franciscans. The Spanish inquisition approved it
twice through the general examiner of the order
of the Capuchins, and through a Trinitarian, the
archbishop of Reggio. It was prefaced by an
enthusiastic and high-flown panegyric on Molinos
by the archbishop of Palermo.
The Quietists seem to have been very powerful at
Rome, since one of them, the Cardinal Bona (pro-
tector of Malaval) was about to become pope.
But things turned out very differently to what
was expected. The great Galilean tempest of
1682, which during nearly ten years interrupted
the relations of France and the holy see, and show-
ed how easily Rome could be dispensed with, obliged
the pope to raise the moral dignity of the pontificate
by acts of severity. The blow fell especially on
the Jesuits and their friends. Innocent XI. passed
a solemn condemnation on the casuists, — a tardy
condemnation passed on persons killed twenty
years before by Pascal. Quietism was not so. The
Franciscans and Jesuits had taken it to heart ; ac-
cordingly the Dominicans were opposed to it.
Molinos, in his manual, had greatly reduced the
merits of St. Dominic, and pretended that St. Tho-
mas in dying, confessed that he had never written any-
thing good. Accordingly, of all the great orders,
that of the Dominicans is the only one whose appi-o-
bation was not accorded to the Cruide of Molinos.
The book and the author, examined under this
new influence, seemed frightfully culpable. The
inquisition of Rome, without pausing on the appro-
val granted twelve years before by its own examin-
ers, condemned the Guide, and moreover a few
propositions which are not to be found there, but
which are drawn from the examination of Molinos,
or from his teaching. The following is not the
least curious. " God, to humiliate us, suffers the
devil to lead certain perfect souls to commit (thou<Th
fully awake and in their lucid state) certain car-
nal acts, and to move their hands and other mem-
bers against their will. In this case and in
* Scala per salire al cielo. Guida, p. 138, lib. ii. c. 18.
t Condemned articles, p. 41, •12, at the beginning of the
Latin translation. (Lips. 1687.)
others, which without that would be culpable, there
is no sin because there is no consent. The case
may happen that these violent movements which
excite to carnal actions, may be found in two per-
sons— a man and a woman, at the same moment."
This had often happened in the case of Molinos
himself, much too often. He pei-formed public
penance, acknowledged his backslidings, and did
not defend his doctrines, which saved him. The
inquisitors, who at first had approved of him, were
themselves a little embarrassed at this proceeding.
He was mildly treated, and only imprisoned; whilst
two of his disciples, who had only faithfully ap-
plied his doctrines, were, without pity, burnt alive.
The one was a cure' of Dijon, the other a priest
of Tudela in Navarre.
How can we feel astonished if such a theory led
to such results in morals 1 If it had not led to
them, it would have been much more surprising.
However, they do not flow exclusively from Moli-
nosism, an imprudent and too palpable a doctrine,
which men took especial care to make no public
profession of. These moral results spring naturally
fi'om every practical direction which puts the will
to sleep, which deprives individuals of that natural
guardian, and exposes them to the arbitrary power
of him who watches by their pallet. The story
which the middle ages tell more than once, and
which the casuists examine so coldly, the violation
of the dead, is found here. The death of the will
leaves the person without defence, quite as much
as physical death.
The ai'chbishop of Palermo, in his Pindaric
panegyric of the Spiritual Guide, sajs that this ad-
mirable book is especially suited to the direction of
nuns. The advice was understood and profited
by, above all in Spain. From the axiom of Mo-
linos, " that sin being an occasion for humility,
serves as a ladder by which to ascend to heaven,"
the Molinosists drew this conclusion, — the more
you sin, the higher you ascend.
There was, among the Carmelites of Lerma, a
holy woman, esteemed as a saint, La Mere Agueda;
to whom persons flocked from neighbouring districts
to have their sick healed. A convent was founded
on the spot which had the happiness of having been
her birthplace. Her portrait, placed in the choir of
the church, was an object of worship. There she
healed such as were brought to her, by applying to
them certain stones which she brought forth with
pangs similar to those of childbirth. This miracle
lasted for twenty years. At length the rumour
spread that these confinements were only too real,
and the result, children, not stones. The inquisitors
of Logrono, having entered the convent, arrested
La Mere Agueda, and questioned the rest of the
nuns, and, among others, the young niece of the
beatified, Donna Vincenta. She confessed, without
any concealment, the intercourse which her aunt,
herself, and others, held with the provincial of the
Carmelites, the prior of Lerma, and others of the
same rank. The saint had been brought to bed
five times, and her niece pointed out the spot
where the children had been killed and buried the
instant they were born. Their bones were dis-
covei'ed *.
* When Lewis's Monk appeared in 1796, people little
expected to see the terrible romance surpassed by a real
story. This may now be found in the Registers of the Inqui-
istion, by Llorente. See the French Translation, p. 30—32.
GENERAL DISGUST WITH SYSTEMS.
37
What is no less horrible is, that this young nun,
cloistered from the age of nine years, devoted when
a child to this singular life, and having obtained no
other light, firmly believed that this was devout
life, perfection, and holiness, and walked in this
path in the utmost confidence, on the faith of her
confessors.
The great doctor of these nuns was the provincial
of the Carmelites, Jean de la Vega. He had writ-
ten the life of the saint, and had got up all her
miracles ; it was he who had had the art to consti-
tute her a worshipped and glorified saint, though
she was still alive. He himself was almost a saint in
the opinion of the people. The monks said every
where, that since the blessed Jean de la Croix,
there had not existed in Spain a man so austere,
so penitent as he. According to the custom of de-
signating illustrious doctors by a surname (the
Angelic, the Seraphic, &c.), he was called the
Ecstatic. More robust than the saint, he bore
up under the torture, while she died under it. He
confessed nothing, excepting having received the
money of eleven thousand eight hundred masses
that he had not said : and he got off with being
banished to the convent of Dui'uelo.
CHAPTER XI.
NO MORE SYSTEMS. — AN EMBLEM. — THE BLOOD. — THE
SEX. — THE IMMACULATE. — THE SACRED HEART. —
MARIE ALACOaUE.— DOUBLE MEANING OP THE SACKED
HEART. — THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IS THE AGE
OF EaUIVOCATION. — CHIMERICAL POLICY OP THE
JESUITS. — FATHER LA COLOMBIERE AND MARIE
ALACOaUE, 1675. — ENGLAND. — PAPIST PLOT. — FIRST
ALTAR OP THE SACRED HEART, 1685. — RUIN OF THE
GALLICANS, 1693;— OF THE ttUIETISTS, 1698;— OF PORT
ROYAL, 1709. — THEOLOGY DESTROYED IN THE EIGH-
TEENTH CENTURY. — MATERIALITY OF THE SACRED
HEART. — THE JESUIT'S ART.
Quietism, so long accused of obscurity, had been
only too clear. It erected into a system, and un-
reservedly laid down as supreme perfection, the
state of immobility and impotence to which the
soul attains at last, when she abdicates her ac-
tivity.
Was it not simplicity to prescribe in set terms
this doctrine of stagnation, and loudly to proclaim
a theory of slumber ? Ah, don't talk so loud, if you
wish men to sleep. This is what was instinctively
felt by business-like theologians, who cared little
for theology, and wished for I'esults.
We must do tlie Jesuits the justice to confess that
they were, at bottom, sufficiently disencumbered of
speculative opinions. We have seen, that after Pas-
cal they themselves writeagainst their own casuistry.
At one moment they had tried Quietism ; the next,
they allowed Fe'neion to believe that they would
support him. But, as soon as Xouis XIV. had
declared himself, " they dived *," preached against
their friend, and discovered forty errors in the
Maxims of the Saints.
They had never succeeded well as theologians.
Silence became them better than any system. They
had caused it to be imposed by the pope on the
Dominicans since the beginning of the century,
• Bossuet, lettre du 31 Mars, 1697; CEuvres (ed. 1836),
xii. 85
then on tlie Jansenists. Since that, their affairs
progressed better. It was just at the period when
they had ceased writing, that they obtained from
the sick king the entire disposal of all benefices
(1687), and became thus, to the surprise of the
Galileans, who believed themselves conquerors,
kings of the clergy of France.
Farewell, now, to ideas and systems. People
were tired of them. We have freriuently remarked
in the foregoing pages the gradual wearisomeness
which was gaining ground. There is, besides, it
must be confessed, in the long lives (whatever they
may be), of men, of states, of religion, there is an
age, when having run from one project to another,
from dream to dream, disgust is experienced to-
wards every idea. In these moments of profound
materiality, nothing but what is substantial is de-
sired. Domen become practical? No. But neither
do they return again to the poetic symbols which
youth adored. The old doating child rather creates
for itself some fetish, some palpable, some tangible
god; the coarser he is, the better he succeeds.
This explains the prodigious success with which
the Jesuits spread, and caused to be accepted, in
this period of lassitude, a new object of worship,
both very carnal, and very material. The heart
of Jesus shown through the wound in his half-
open bosom, or torn out and bleeding.
Almost the same thing had happened in the de-
crepitude of paganism. Religion had sought a
refuge in the sacrifice of bulls, in the sanguinary
Mythriac expiation, — the worship of blood.
At the great feast of the Sacred Heart which
the Jesuits gave in the last century, in the Coli-
seum of Rome, they struck a medal with this in-
scription, worthy of the solemn occasion, " He gave
himself for food to the people, in the amphitheatre
of Titus*."
Instead of a system, an emblem, a mute sign —
what a triumph for the friends of obscurity and
equivocation ! No equivocation is so successful
in producing indecision and confusion of ideas,
as a material object, susceptible of a thousand
explanations. The old Christian symbols, so often
explained, so often translated, present to the mind,
as soon as perceived, only too clear a significa-
tion. They are the austere symbols of death
and mortification. The new one was more obscure.
That emblem, bloody, it is true, but carnal and
impassioned, speaks of death less than of life.
The heart palpitates, the blood steams, and a
living man is there, who, with his hands pointing
to his wound, beckons you to come and probe this
half-open breast.
The heart ! that word alone, has always been
powerful ; the organ of affections, the heart, ex-
presses them in its own way, swelling, heaving
with sighs. The life of tlie heart, strong and con-
fused, comprehends and mingles all the affections.
Such a word adapts itself wouderfully to a double
meaning.
Who understands it best ? Women. With them
the life of the henrt is everything. This organ,
the conduit of the blood, and .strongly affected by
the circulation of the blood, is no less i)redominant
in woman than the sexual instinct itself. The
heart has been the great modern religion for
nearly two hundred years, and we see a strange
• In 1771. On the Sacred Hearts (by Tabaraud), p. 82.
38
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES,
question relating to the sex was for two hundred
years the thought of the middle ages.
Strange thing ! in this spiritual epoch a long, pub-
lic, solemn discussion, took place throughout Eu-
rope, in the schools, in the chui-ches, in the pulpit,
upon an anatomical subject, of which no one would
dare to speak in our times,except in a school of medi-
cine. What subject 1 Conception *. Imagine all
these monks, men devoted to celibacy, Dominicans,
Franciscans, boldly examining this question, teach-
ing it to all, preaching anatomy to children f, to
little girls, drawing their attention to their sex,
and its most secret mystery.
The heart, a more noble organ, had the advan-
tage of furnishing a host of expressions of a doubtful
but decent meaning, a whole language of equivocal
tendernesses, which made no one blush, and faci-
litated the trickery of devout gallantry.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the directors and confessors find in the Sacri Coeur,
a convenient text. But women, on the conti-ary,
take it seriously; they are wai-med, they are im-
passioned, they see visions. The Virgin appears
to a Norman peasant girl ; she commands her to
worship the heart of Mary t. The Visitandines
called themselves daughters of the Heart of Jesus.
Jesus does not fail to appear to a Visitandine,
Mademoiselle Marie Alacoque, and shows her his
heart and his wound.
She was a very robust girl, very sanguine, whom
it was constantly necessary to bleed. She had
entered the convent at twenty-three years of age,
with her passions unchecked ; her childhood had
not been miserably nipped, as happens in the case of
those who are early shut up §. Her devotion at once
assumed the character of a violent love, desirous of
suffering for the sake of the loved object. Having
heard that Madame de Chantal had inscribed on
her bosom with a hot iron the name of Jesus,
she did so likewise. The Lover was not insensible,
and thenceforward visited her. It was with the
knowledge, and under the direction of an able su-
perior, that Mademoiselle Alacoque, entered into an
intimate connection with the divine Bridegroom.
She celebrated her marriage with him ; and a regular
contract was drawn up by the superior, which Marie
Alacoque signed with her blood. " One day, that
she had," says her biographer, " licked up with
her tongue the vomit of a sick man, Jesus was so
satisfied that he permitted her to press her lips to
one of his divine wouuds 1|."
This had nothing to do with theology. It was a
question of physiology and medicine. Mademoiselle
Alacoque was a girl of an ardent temperament, ex-
alted by celibacy. She was by no means mystic in
the proper sense of the word. More fortunate
• See among other works, that of Gravois, De ortu et
progressu cultus immaculati conceptus; 1764, in 4to.
t With the most shocking details, which it is impossible
to reprint.
t Eudes, brother of Mozerai, founder of the Eudists,
wrote the life of this peasant, and was the true founder of
thi^ new worship. The .Jesuits took up the matter and
profited by it. (See Tabaraud, p. HI.) I have in vain
searched for the manuscript work of Eudes in every library.
It must have been purposely removed.
^ She had been placed there at eight years of age ; but
she fell ill ; and left it at ten. Laiiguet, p. 7, 9, 36.
II No legend is more carefully recorded. See Languet,
GaliflTet, &c.
than Madame Guyon, who did not behold the object
of her love, she saw and touched the body of the
Divine Lover. The heart which he showed her in
his open breast was a bloody viscus. The extreme
plethora from which she suffered, and from which
frequent bleedings did not relieve her, filled her
imagination with these visions of blood.
The Jesuits, great propagators of this new de-
votion, took care not to explain cleai'ly whether
it was proper to pay homage to the symbolical
heart, to celestial love, or to adore the heart of
flesh. When pressed to explain themselves, they
return different answers, according to the person,
time, and place. Father Gallifet delivered at one
and the same time two contrary answers; at Rome,
he said, that the symbolic heart was meant ; at
Paris, he said in pi'int that there was no metaphor,
that the flesh itself was honoured *.
The equivoque was successful. In less than
forty years, there were formed in France four
hundred and twenty-eight brotherhoods of the Sa-
cred Heart !
I cannot avoid pausing here a moment, to admire
the triumph of equivocation throughout the whole
of this century.
On whatever side I look, I find it everywhere,
in things and in persons. Equivocation sits on the
throne with Madame de Mainteuon ; this person,
living near the king, and before whom the prin-
cesses stand, is she queen, or is she not 1 Equi-
vocation is near the throne in the humble Pere l:i
Chaise, the real king of the clergy of France, who,
from a gaiTet in Versailles, distributes all the be-
nefices. Our Galileans, so loyal, the Jansenists, so
scrupulous, do they abstain from equivocation ?
No ; obedient, yet rebellious, waging war on their
knees, they kiss the foot of the pope, and desire to
tie his hands ; they spoil their best reasons by
their dlst'inguo and subtei-fuges.
In truth, wlien I compare with the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries, this Janus of the seventeenth,
the two others appear honest centuries, at least as
sincere in good, as in evil. How m.any false and
crooked things are there not slurred over by the
majestic harmony of the seventeenth ! All is
softened, sliaded in form, and the groundwork is
often worse. To replace the local inquisitions, you
have the police of the Jesuits, armed with the power
of the king. For a Saint Bartholomew, you have
the long, immense, religious revolution, called the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, that cruel comedy
of forced conversion ; then the unheard-of tragedy
of a proscription organized by all the civil and
military means of a modern government ! Bossuet
sings the song of triumph ; and falsehood, lies, and
misery, appear everywhere ! Deceit in politics ;
local life destroyed without the creation of central
life ! Deceit in morals ; that polished court, that
crowd of elegant people, are unexpectedly shown
in their true light by the chamber of poisons ; the
king suppressed the trial, fearing to find every
one gtiilty ! And can devotion be real with such
morals ? Ah ! if you reproach the sixteenth with
its violent fanaticism, if the eighteenth apjiears
cynical, and without human sympathies, confess
also, th;it lying, falsehood, hypocrisy, is the cha-
racteristic feature of the seventeenth ; the great
* The two answers may be read at pages 35 and 73 of
Tabaraud, Des Sacres Cceurs.
POPISH CONSPIRACY IN ENGLAND.
39
historian, Moliere, has drawn the portrait of the
age, and discovered its name — Tartuffe.
I return to the Sacred Heart, which, to speak
the truth, I have not quitted, since it is in this age
the illustrious proof of the success of equivocation.
The Jesuits, who, in general, have invented little,
did not invent this ; but they understood pei'fectly
the use to be made of it. We have seen how, little
by little, whilst averring that the female convents
did not concern them, they had become their
masters. The Visitation was especially under their
influence. The superior of Marie Alacoque, who
was in her confidence, and directed her relations
with Jesus Christ, took care to acquaint Pere la
Chaise with what was going on.
The matter was coming to a crisis. The Jesuits
were in want of a popular machine which they
might work to the profit of their policy. It was
tlie moment when they believed, or rather told the
king, that England, sold by Charles II., was on
the eve of a general conversion. Intrigue, money,
women, all were employed — king Charles was given
mistresses, his brother, confessors. The Jesuits,
who, with all their cunning, often entertain the
most visionary projects, believed that by gaining
over five or six lords, they could change the whole
of that Protestant mass, which is Protestant not
from belief merely, but from interest, from habit,
Protestant to the bottom, and with English tenacity.
Behold then these great politicians, advancing
with wolfish stealth, and imagining that they are
going to carry every thing by surprise. An essen-
tial point for them wivs to place near the king's
brother, James, a secret preacher, who in his pri-
vate chapel could work silently and attempt a few
conversions. To fill this ])art of convert-maker,
a seductive man was required, but above all ardent
and fanatic; and such were not common then. This
quality was wanting in the young man whom La
Chaise had in view. It was one Pere la Colombiere,
who taught rhetoric in the college of Lyons ; an
agreeable preacher*, an elegant writer, much
esteemed by Patru, a gentle and docile character ;
he only wanted a little madness. To give him this
he was introduced to Mademoiselle Alacoque ; he
was sent to Paray-le-monial, where she was, as ex-
traordinary confessor of the Visitandines (1675).
He was thirty-four years old, she twenty-eigiit.
Well prepared by the superior, she recognized in
him the great servant of God whom her visions
had promised, and on the very first day she be-
held in the ardent heart of Jesus her heart united
to the heart of the Jesuit.
La Colombiere, of a gentle and feeble character,
was carried irresistibly away by this ardent whirl-
wind of passion and fanaticism. He was kept a
year and a half in the furnace ; then, still burning,
he was snatched away from Paray and sent to
England. He was still a little mistrusted ; it was
feared that he would cool ; and it was thought
necessary to send him from time to time a few
ardent and inspired lines, which Marie Alacoque
dictated, the superior wrote.
He remained thus two yeai's with the duchess of
• His sermons are feeble. His Retratlcs Spirituelles are
more curious ; they constitute the journal of tlieyouug Jesuit.
It is easy to be perceived, from the efforts he makes to
exalt his imagination, that fanaticism is already a difficult
task. His portrait, wliich is very characteristic, is placed
at the head of his Sermons.
York, so well concealed and shut up that he did
not even see London. A few lords who believed
it useful to be converted to the religion of the
heir-presumptive, were mysteriously brought to
him.
England having at length discovered the Papist
conspiracy. La Colombiere was accused, brought
before parliament, and shipped for France. He
returned ill; and although his superiors sent him
back to Paray to see if the nun could revive him,
he died there of fever.
However little inclined we may be to believe in
great results brought about by little causes, we are
obliged to confess tliat the miserable intrigue just re-
lated, had an incalculable effect upon France and
the whole woi-ld. The conquest of England was
the object in view ; and they showed her, not the
Galileans whom she respected, but the Jesuits whom
she always held in horror. At the moment when
Catholicism should at least, as a matter of pru-
dence, have discarded the idolatries of which the
Protestants accused her, she brought forward a
new one, and the most shocking of all, the carnal
and sensual doctrine of the Sacred Heart. To
blend the absurd and the horrible, it was in 1685, in
the for ever infamous year of the Revocation of the
edict of Nantes, that I\Iarie Alacoque raised the
first of those altars which afterwards covered the
whole of France. We all know how England, c<m-
firmed by the Jesuits in Protestantism and hatred
of Rome, took to itself a Dutch king, included Hol-
land in her movement, and, by the good under-
standing of the two maritime powers, obtained the
dominion of the sea.
The Jesuits can boast of having solidly estab-
lished Protestantism in England. All the Father
Matthews in the world will make no change there.
Their political work we have seen was impor-
tant : it ended in the marriage of England and
Holland, which almost destroyed France.
And their religious woi-k. What was it amongst
us in the latter days of Louis XIV. ? What was
the last use made of the omnipotent power of the
La Chaises and the Telliers? Why — the destruction
of Port-Royal, a military expedition to carry away
fifteen old women, the dead torn from the earth,
sacrilege committed by the hand of authority*.
They hastened to use this dying authority in that
terrible year 1709, which seemed about to destroy
the monarchy and the kingdom, to get i"id of their
enemies \.
Port-Royal came to an end (1709), Quietism
had come to an end (1698), and Gallicanism itself,
* See the details in the Historical Memoirs on Port-Royal
(1756), and in the General History, 1757.
t Theypursue them with the same fury, in our time, par-
ticularly the sisters who are believed to be Jaiisenists. The
Janseiiists desire to suffer and die in silence; they do not
desire our pity. But history cannot allow this martyr-
like resignation. I will mention, as a curious and little
known fact, the excellent review which they publish in
small numbers for themselves (Ecclesiastical Review,
Rue Saint Severin, 4). In this they have answered with
force and moderation the unseemly declarations afjainst
Port-Royal, made by P. Ravignan, in the church of Saint
Severin itself (1842), and the ultra-niontane novelties which
this Jesuit preached. Who would believe that in perse-
cuting, insulting the Jansenists, the Jesuit party had dared
to lean (in the Chamber of Peers) on the names nf illustrious
Jansenists themselves, as for example that of RoUin? Are
they the heirs of those whom tliey assassinate?
40
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
the great royal religion, had been placed at the feet
of the pope by the king (1693). Bossuet was laid
in the tomb by the side of Fe'ne'lon, and he by
the side of Arnaud. Victors and vanquished re-
pose in the common nullity.
The emblematic prevailing and taking the place
of all system, less and less desire was felt to analyze,
to explain, and to think. This was matter of tri-
umph. Explanation, when most favourable to au-
thority, is still a concession, a homage to the liberty
of the mind. In the shadow of an obscure em-
blem it was thenceforward possible, without laying
down any formula, or giving any handle to their
adversaries, to practise indifferently all the va-
rious theories which had been abandoned, and to
follow them alternately or concurrently, according
to the interest of the day
Wise policy, beautiful wisdom, by which they cover
their nullity. Relieved from the trouble of rea-
soning for others, reasoning itself was lost ; in the
day of peril men found themselves disarmed. This
is what happened in the eighteenth century. The
terrible polemic of that time found them dumb.
Voltaire discharged a hundred thousand arrows
without waking them. Rousseau grappled with and
shattered them, and yet not a word was uttered.
Who could answer ? Theulogy was unknown to
theologians *. The persecutors of the Jansenists
blended in the books published in the name of Marie
Alacoque,both Jansenist and Molinist opinions with-
out knowing it f . They drew up in 1708, the ma-
nual which has since been the basis of the instruction
adopted in our seminaries; and this manual con-
tains the new doctrine that at each papal decision,
Jesus Christ inspires the pope with his decision,
and inspires the bishops with obedience ; every
thing is oracular, every thing is miraculous, in this
gross system ; reason is completely exterminated
from theology.
Thenceforth there was little doctrine, and still
less sacred history taught ; and the instruction
given would be null if the old casuistiy did not fill
up the void with immoral subtleties.
The only part of mankind to which they have for a
long time addressed themselves, that of women, is the
world of sensibility ; they do not require science ;
they require impressions rather than ideas : the
less they are occupied with ideas, the easier it is to
conceal from them the progress of the world and
the march of mind.
In a system which teaches that sanctity consists
in immolating the spirit, the more material the wor-
ship is, the better it immolates the spirit. The
more it is degraded, the more holy it is. To couple
salvation with the exercise of the moral virtues
would be to require the exercise of reason: where is
the necessity of virtue ? Wear this medal, it will
blot out your iniquities i. Reason would still have a
share in religion, if, as reason teaches us, it was
• It appears to be singular! j' so in our times. What a spec-
tacle to behold a sermon preached before the highest eccle-
siastical authority, which, from the first word to the last, is
nothing but heresy! The adversaries of their theology
are the only persons who remember it.
t Tabaraud, on the Sacred Hearts, p. 38.
t The medal of the Immaculate Conception, made under
the auspices of M. de Quelen, has already saved assassins
and other criminals. See the notice by a Lazarist, and ihe
passages quoted by Genin, The Jesuils and the University,
p. 87—97.
necessary for salvation absolutely to love God ;
Marie Alacoque has seen that it was sufficient not
to hate him. The devotees of the Sacred Heart
ai'e saved unconditionally.
When the Jesuits were suppressed, they had in
their hands no religious means, but this paganism;
and it was in it that they placed, at that time,
all their hopes of I'esuscitation. They caused en-
gravings to be made on which they placed this
device, " I will give them the buckler of my
Heart."
The popes, who at first were uneasy at the handle
which such a materialism gave to the attacks of the
philosophers *, have found out in our time that
it is very useful to them ; as it addresses itself to a
class of people who do not read the philosophers,
and who, although devout, are not the less material.
They have preserved the precious equivocation of
the ideal heart, and of the heart of flesh, and forbid-
den to explain whether the Sacred Heart designates
the love of God for man, or a piece of bleeding
flesh f! By reducing the thing to the idea it would
be deprived of the impassioned attraction which
constitutes its success.
In the last century the bishops had advanced
further, declaring that the Jlesh was in this case
the principal object. And they even placed this
flesh in certain hymns after the Trinity as a fourth
person.
Priests, women, young girls, have ever since been
competitors in this devotion. I have in my posses-
sion a manual, largely circulated in the country, in
which persons of the br(jtherhood, who pray one for
the other, are taught how hearts are associated,
and how these united hearts " should desire to
enter into the opening of the Heart of Jesus, and
plunge themselves without ceasing into this amor-
ous wound."
The brethren, in their manuals, have thought it
sometimes gallant to place the heart of Mary above
that of Jesus (see that of Nantes, 17G9). Generally
in their engravings, she is younger than her son,
being, for instance, only twenty years old when he
is thirty, so that at first sight he seems less a son
than husband or lover.
The most violent satire against the Jesuits is
that which they have themselves perpetrated;
namely, this art of theirs, and the pictures, the
statues which they have inspired. They have
already been characterized by the severe saying
of Poussin: " We cannot imagine a Christ with a
wry neck or with the face of Father Douillet."
And yet Poussin saw the best epoch of Jesuitism ;
what would he have said, if he had seen what
followed, if he had seen that decrepid coquetry
which thinks it smiles and only grimaces, those
ridiculous attitudes, those dying eyes, and so on ]
The worst is, that those who have no longer any
idea but of the flesh, no longer know how to repre-
sent it ; the idea becoming more and more mate-
rial and ductile, the form becomes defaced, de-
graded from image to image, ignoble, paltry, soft,
heavy, blunt, that is to say shapeless J.
* Lambertini, De servorura'Dei beatificatione, t. iv. pars
secunda, 1. 4, c. 30, p. 310. It pains us to see a man of sense
labouring to be only absurd by halves.
t Pius VI. condemned the council of Pistoia, which en-
deavoured to draw a distinction. lb. 79.
I In 1834, turning my attention to Christian iconography,
I looked over, in the Royal Library, the collection of images
ON DIRECTION IN GENERAL.
41
Such as was the art, such were the men. It is
difficult to augur well of the minds of those who in-
spired this art, who recommended these images,
placed. them every where in their churches, spread
tliera by thousands and by millions. Such a taste
is a grave sign. Many immoral people still pre-
serve a sentiment of elegance. But to alight
voluntarily on the ignoble aud on the false shows
of Christ. Those which have been published within the last
thirty years are the most humiliating things I have ever
seen, for art and human nature. Every man (philosopher or
believer) who has preserved any sentiment of religion, must
be filled with indignation. All possible improprieties, all
sensualities, all low passions, are there ; the young, flaxen
seminarist, the licentious priest, the robust cure, looking
4 la Mingrat, S;c. The engraving is worthy the design ; it
seems executed with a piece of wood dipped in soot.
that the mind has descended to the lowest
depths.
A truth here presents itself which we must re-
cognize— it is, that art is the only thing inaccessible
to falsehood. Child of the heart, of natural inspi-
ration, it will not suffer the alloy of the false ; it will
not allow itself to be violated uncomplainingly ;
and if the false triumphs, it dies. Every thing else
may be imitated, may be acted. They succeeded
in creating a theology in the sixteenth century, a
morality in the seventeenth ; but an art, never !
The holy and the just may be simulated ; how
simulate the beautiful ? You are ugly, poor Tar-
tuffe ; ugly you will remain ; it is your mark.
You ever attain to the beautiful! ever approach it !
This would be impious, beyond all impiety. — The
beautiful is the face of God !
PART THE SECOND.
ON DIRECTION IN GENERAL, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
RESEMBLAKCES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEVEN-
TEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. — CHRISTIAN
ART. — IT IS WE THAT HAVE RESTORED THE CHURCH. —
WHAT IT ADDS TO THE POWER OF THE PRIEST. — THE
CONFESSIONAL.
There are two objections that may be made
against all that has just been said, and I will make
them.
I. " The examples are taken from the seven-
teenth century, from an epoch in which the director
was influenced by theological questions, that do
not now occupy the world or the church ; for in-
stance, the question of Grace and Free Will, the
question of Quietism or of Repose in Love." I
have already answered this. These questions are
obsolete, dead, if you will, as theories ; but in the
spirit and practical method emanating from the theo-
ries, they are and always will be living. Theorists
simple enough to lay down in so many words a doc-
trine of moral sleep and annihilation will no longer
be found ; but there always will be found empirics
enough to practise silently the art of putting
men to sleep. If this is not clear enough, I will
make it clearer than may be wished presently.
II. Another difficulty: — " Do theexamples which
you draw from the books and the letters of the
great men of the great age, prove any thing for
ours? Did not those profound and subtle minds,
who carried so far the science of the government
"f souls, push refinement to an extent of which
the common herd of confessors and directors can-
not even form an idea ? What can you fear of
this kind from tlie poor and simple priests of
these d.ays ? Where, I pray you, are our Saint
Fran9oi3 de Sales, our Bossuets, our Fendons ?
Do you not see that the clergy not only does not
now contain men of such genius, but that it has de-
teriorated generally and as a class. The great ma-
jority of priests are drawn from provincial families.
The peasant, even when he is not poor, finds it
convenient to lighten the burden of his family by
getting a son into the seminary. Infantile education,
that which is received from parents before all other,
the youth has never been blessed with. The semi-
nary in no case repairs this disadvantage of birth
and circumstances. If we judge by those who have
come out of the hands of the Sulpicians, Lazarist-s,
&c., we might be tempted to think that the heads
of the church have come to a determination to form
indifferent priests, who would be so much the more
dependent, and blind to the influence exercised over
them against their real interest. What then do you
fear ? Does not this intellectual abasement of the
clergy reassure you ? How can they follow the
learned tactics of the priests of former days in con-
fessing and directing? The dangers you point out
are imaginary."
It is easy to answer:
Great powers of mind and finished education are
not so necessary as you think, to govern minds
which desire to be governed. His authority, his
character, the place, the garb, give influence to the
priest, and supply in him what is wanting to the man.
It is less by ability than by constancy and perse-
verance that he acquires the ascendant. If he is
little cultivated, he is at least less distracted by
the variety of new ideas, which, without ceasing,
cross us modern men, unman us and fatigue us.
He has fewer ideas, views, projects, but one interest,
one end; and the same end always invariably fol-
lowed, must ensure success.
But is cunning incompatible with want of refine-
ment ? Peasants are a circumspect race, often full of
artfulness, and of an indefatigable constancy in
following up their narrow interests. See what long
years, what divers means, and often indirect means,
they employ to add two feet to their land. Do
you think that his son, M. le Cure, will be less
patient, less arduous in endeavouring to govern
42
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
a soul, to govern a woman, to penetrate into a
family ?
These peasant families have often much vigour,
and a sap in their blood, in their temperament, which
gives them wit, or makes up for the want of it.
Those of the South, above all, fnmi among whom
the clergy gets its principal reci-uits, supply in-
trepid talkers who stand in need of no knowledge,
and who, by their very ignorance, are perhaps
more fitted for their relation with the simple
persons whom they address. They talk loudly
and firmly; the educated would be more reserved,
less proper to fascinate the weak ; they would
not venture such bold attempts in spiritual mattei'S,
so coarse a magnetism.
In this respect, I must confess it, there is a
serious difference between our age and the seven-
teentli, when the clergy, of all ranks, was so let-
tered. That cultivation, those extensive studies,
that great theological and literary activity were for
the priest of that time, the most powerful means of
preserving him from the numerous temptations
which beset him. Science, or at least controversy
and disputation, created for him, in a situation often
very worldly, a sort of rectitude, an alibi, so to
speak, which was his safeguard. But our priests,
who have nothing of this kind, who, moreover, de-
rive their origin from coarse and material races,
and wlio do not know how to employ this perplexuig
power, stand in need of virtue indeed !
The great men, from whom we have drawn our
examples, had a wonderful defence against carnal
and spiritual desires — more than a defence, wings
whicli raised them from earth, at the critical mo-
ment, above all temptation. By these wings I mean
the love of God, the love of genius for itself, its
natural effort to maintain its high position and as-
cend still liii;lier, the repugnance it has to descend.
Heads of the clergy of France, the only clergy
which at that time possessed life, responsible to
the world for that which subsisted by their faith,
they kept their heart up to the height of the pro-
digious part they had to play. One thought was
the guardian of their life, one thought which they
repressed, but which does not the less sustain
them under the most delicate trials ; namely, that
in them dwelt the Church.
Their great experience both of the world and
of the soul *, their tact, their able management
of men and things, far from enfeebling morality,
as we might be tempted to think, rather strength-
ened it in them, placing them in a position to
feel and foresee all perils, to behold the ap-
proach of the enemy, not to leave him the ad-
vantage of unexpected attacks, or at least to know-
how to elude them. We have seen how Bossuet
checked at the first word the soft confidence of a
feeble nun. The little we have said of the di-
rection of Fe'nelon sufficiently shows how the
dangerous director steered between dangers.
These eminently spiritual persons could follow
through many long years, between heaven and
earth, this tender dialectic of the love of God.
* Another great difference between tliem and those of the
present day. The latter know neither the precedents, nor
the varieties of character, nor the time, nor the persons. As
soon as they emerge from llieir subterraneous dwelling, they
are shy, rough, and violent at once; they strike at liap-
h.izard, and fall upon the passer-by who is compelled to push
them aside.
Is the same the case with people who have no
wings, who crawl and do not fly ? Incapable of
those ingenious circuits by which passion plays
with and eludes herself, are they not in danger of
falling at the first step ?
I know well that the absence of early educa-
tion, of which we just now spoke, and vulgarity and
awkwardness, may often place a barrier between
the priest and a delicate woman. But many things,
which would not be tolerated in another, are set
down to his account as merits. Stiffness is aus-
terity ; awkwardness is the simplicity of a saint
who has lived only in the desert. Other rules and
more indulgent ones are aj)plied to him than to
the laity. He has an advantage in the character
which makes him a man apart, in his costume, in
the place, in that mysterious church which lends to
the most vulgar a poetical reflection.
Who gave them this last advantage 1 We our-
selves. It was we who, in our simplicity, raised
up, rebuilt, in some sort, those churches which
they had deserted. The priest was making Saint
Sulpice aud other piles of stones. The laity re-
stoi-ed for him Notre-Dame, Saint Ouen. They
showed him the Christian spirit in those living
stones*, and he did not see it ; they taught it to
him, and he did not understand it. And how long
has the misunderstanding lasted 1 Not less than
forty years, since the appearance of the Genius of
Christianity . The priest would not believe us,
when we explained to him that sublime edifice ;
he did not recognize it. Why should we wonder ?
It only belongs to those wlio have understood itf.
At length, however, he has thought better of it.
He has found it to be politic to talk like us about
Christian art, to boast of it. He has adorned
himself with l)is church; he has wi-apped himself
in that glorious mantle; he has taken an im-
posing attitude. The crowd comts, sees, ad-
mires. Certainly, if we judge of the man dressed
* Let me be permitted to call to mind, in answer to so
many absurd attacks, that I have done two things for art in
the middle age: 1st, I have explained its principle and life,
which my illustrious predecessors (whether German or
French), in this career had not dotje; 2nd, / have explained
its ruin, pointed out the cause of death which this art con-
tained within itself. I have admired it, but 1 have classified
it, without being carried away by an exclusive admiration.
See the last chapter of the second volume of my History
of France, and above all the last ten pages. In the same
volume, I committed a serious error, which I must rec-
tify. In speaking of ecclesiastical celibacy (a propos of
Gregory VII.), I said that never could married men have
reared those sublime monuments, the spire of Strasburg, &c.
It happens, on the contrary, that the architects of the
Gothic church were laymen, for the most part married.
The architect of Strasburg, Erwin de Steinbach, had a cele-
brated daughter, Sabina, who was herself an artist.
t And those who understand it are the only ones who
respect and regret it. If we were the mortal enemies of
these churches, we should do what is doing every day; we
should deprive them of whatever renders them venerable,
the antique colour, the moss of past times, the mutilations;
we should efface all this; we should fill them with statues
of every age, as they desire to do in Notre-Dame, and we
should turn tliem into a museum. The church has resisted
revolutions and time ; it cannot resist the conspiracy of the
masons and the priests. The mason has persuaded the priest
that the Gothic style could l)e repeated in 1SJ5. So believ-
ing him, they scrape, tear up and down, demolish the oUl
Gothic building, in perfect confidence that they can create a
new one.
CONFESSION.— PAST AND PRESENT.
43
by his dress, of liim who puts on a Notre-Darae de
Paris, a cathedral of Cologne, he is apparently the
giant of the spiritual world. Alexander, on his
departure from India, desiring to deceive the
future respecting the stature of his Macedonians,
caused a camp to be marked out in which ten
feet were allowed for each man. What a place
this church is! what a dwelling! and what an im-
mense host must dwell there ! Optical delusion
adds in this case to size. All proportion changes.
The eye deceived, deceives itself: — sublime lights,
deep shades, all turn to the advantage of illu-
sion. The man who, from his lowly countenance,
you took in the streets for a village school-
master, is here a prophet. . . . He is transfigured
by this gi-and framework ; his heaviness becomes
force and majesty ; his voice produces formidable
echoes. Fear falls on woman and child.
Let this \voman return home, and everything
appears poor and wretched. Even if her husband
were a Pierre Curneille, if he inhabited the wretched
house which is still shown, she would despise him.
Intellectual gi-eatness, on a ground floor, does not
strike her. She compares, and is sadl}', gently
peevish. The husband is patient, and smiles, or ap-
pears to smile. " The director is turning her head,"
says he aloud ; and softly to himself, "After all, she
only sees him in church." But what place, I pray,
is-more powerful than the church, over the imagina-
tion, more rich in illusion, more fascinating I It
is exactly the church which ennobles the man,
vulgar elsewhere ; which aggrandises, which exag-
gerates him, which lends him a ray of its poetry.
Do you see that solemn figure which, under the
gold and the purple of the pontifical garments,
ascends with the thoughts of the people, with the
prayers of ten thousand men, the triumphal stair-
case of the choirof St. Denis ? Do you again see him,
above all that kneeling crowd, rising to the height
of the vaulted roof, his head touching the capitals
of the columns, lost among the winged heads of
angels, and from thence hurling thunder. Well,
it is this man, this terrible archangel, who presently
descends for her; and now, gentle and easy, comes
yonder, in that dim chapel, to listen to her in the
languishing hours of evening ! Beautiful hour !
tumultuous, but tender — (why do our hearts beat
so violently now ?) How dai'k already is this
church, though the hour is not yet late. The
great rose window over the portal glitters in the
setting sun. . . . But in the choir it is other-
wise ; gloomy shadows spread there, and behind is
complete darkness. . . . One thing astonishes, and
almost terrifies, at whatever distance we see it ; it
is the depth of the church ; that mystery of old
stained windows, which, exhibiting no longer any
precise outline of designs, twinkles through the
gloom like an illegible scroll of unknown characters.
For all this, the chapel is not less dark ; you can
no longer distinguish the ornaments, the delicate
mouldings, which imite at the top of the vault ; the
thickening shadows round off, and obscure every
form. And yet, as if the chapel itself was not dark
enough, it contains in a corner the narrow box of
black oak, where this man full of emotion, this
trembling woman, in such close company, meet to
whisper about the love of God.
CHAPTER II.
CONFESSION.— PRESENT EDUCATION OP THE YOUNG CON-
FESSOR.—THE CONFESSOR OF THE MIDDLE AGES : —
FIRST, HE believed; SECONDLY, HE MORTIFIED HIM-
SELF; THIRDLY, HE WAS SUPERIOR BY EDUCATION;
FOURTHLY, HE WAS LESS INHUISITI VE. — THE CASUISTS
WROTE FOR THEIR OWN TIM E. — DANGERS OF THE
YOUNG CONFESSOR.— HOW HE STRENGTHENS HIS TOT-
TERING POSITION.
A WORTHY parish priest has often told me that the
sore part of his estate, his own despair, and the
torment of his life, is confession.
The studies by which they are prepared for it in
the seminary, are such as often to ruin both con-
stitution and disposition ; the body succumbs, the
mind remains enervated, and defiled.
Lay education, which sets up no pretence to ex-
cess of purity, and whose pupils are destined to
mix with the world at large, takes, nevertheless,
great care to remove from the eyes of youth the
too seductive images which trouble the senses.
Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which
pretends to form men superior to man, virgins,
pure spirits, angels, fixes the attention of its pu-
pils precisely on the things which are to be for ever
interdicted to them, and gives them for subjects of
study the most terrible temptations, sufficient to
damn all the saints. Printed books have been
cited ; but not the manuscript books which form
the course of the two last years of seminary educa-
tion, and which contain what the most intrepid
have not dared to publish.
I cannot repeat here that which has been re-
vealed to me by those who have suffered by this
idiotic education, and whom it nearly destroyed.
No one can imagine the state of a poor young
man, still a sincei-e believer, and struggling
between the terror and temptation by which lie
is surrounded at will, between two unknown things,
one of which alone is sufficient to drive him mad,
woman ! hell ! and, nevertheless, constrained un-
ceasingly to gaze into the abyss of these immoral
books, his eyes blood-shot with the fire of health
and youth.
This wonderful imprudence originated in the
scholastic supposition, that the mind could be very
well separated from the body. It was believed that
they could be led like two coursers by different
enticements to the right or to the left. It was not
remembered that, in this case, it would be with the
man as with the car sculptured on the pediment of
the Louvre, which being drawn in two opposite
directions, must necessarily be di-agged in pieces.
However different the nature of the two sub-
stances may be, it is but too plain that they are
mixed in action. Not a movement of the mind
fails to act on the body, and the body reacts
likewise. The most cruel war upon the body would
succeed in killing it more easily than in preventing
its action on the soul. What childishness, then,
to believe that a vow, a few prayers, .a black gown
on your back, can deliver you from the flesh, and
make a pure spirit of you !
The middle ages, and that crowd of men who
have lived a lil'e of mortification, may be adduced
as an objection.
Here I have not only one reply, but twenty, all
unanswerable. It is but too easy to show that the
priest in general, and especially tlie confessor.
44
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
was in no wise then what they have been for two
centuries.
I. The first answer will, perhaps, seem somewhat
harsh ; then, tlie priest believed. — " What ! the priest
believes no longer ? Do you mean to say, that in
speaking of his faith with so much energy, he is a
hypocrite and a liar V — No, I will allow that he
is sincere. But there is a difference between be-
lieving and believing ; there are many degrees of
faith. It is related, that Lope de Vega (who, as
is well known, was a priest) could not officiate ;
at the moment of the sacrifice, he represented
the Passion to himself too deeply, burst into tears,
and fainted. Compare this with the coquettish
pantomime of the Jesuit, who says the mass at
Fribourg, or of the priest whom I have seen oc-
cupied at the altar, m exhibiting his small, white
hand.
The priest believed, and his penitent believed.
Tremendous terrors of miracles, of devils, of hell,
filled the church. The word " God hears you,"
was not only graven on the wood, but on the
heart. The confessional was not divided by a
board, but by the sword of • the archangel, by
thoughts of the day of judgment.
II. If the priest spoke in the name of the spirit,
he had the more right to do so, having purchased
spiritual power by the suicide of the body. His
long vigils would have been sufficient to exhaust
it. But this was cared for more directly by ex-
cess of fasting. Fasting was the regimen of the
poor and rude schools of the Mendicants, and Cap-
pets, whose scanty meal was composed of arguments.
Half-dead before the age of manhood, they iced their
blood by herbs of mortal coldness, and exhausted
it by bleeding. The number of bleedings to which
monks were to be submitted was settled in their
rules. The stomach was generally destroyed, and
strength was rarely recovered. Saint Bernard and
Saint Theresa were enfeebled by continual emetics :
even the sense of taste was destroyed. " The saint,"
says his biographer, " took blood for butter." The
word mortification was not then a vain word; there
was not an isolation of the soul from the body,
but an actual suppression of the body,
III. The priest believed himself to be in this
sense the man of the spirit, and he was effectually
sohy superiority of education. He knew every thing,
the other nothing. Even when the priest was
young, he was really the father, the other the
child. Now, it is the contrary ; the layman, es-
pecially in the towns, has generally more education
than the priest ; even the peasant, who has a fa-
mily, interests, affairs, who has passed through the
army, has more experience than the cur^, more
real knowledge ; and so, it is of little consequence
whether or notjie break Priscian's head. The con-
trast is much greater when this inexperienced
priest, ignorant of evei-y thing but the seminary,
sees at his knees a -woman of the world, of in-
trigue, of passion, who, at thirty-five years of age
say, has traversed the whole region of sentiments
and ideas. What ! it is she who is in want of
advice ; it is she who calls him, My father ! Each
word she utters is a revelation to him ; he is as-
tonished, internally terrified. If he is not wise
enough to hold his tongue, he will talk like a child.
His iienitcnt, who came in a state of emotion, will
go away laughing.
I V. There is another difference which will only
strike those who know the middle ages well : The
tomjue was not then untied, as it has since been.
Being without our habits of analysis and circum-
stantiality, confession was necessarily i-educed to a
declaration of the sin, without any detail of circum-
stance. Still less could they then enlarge upon the
phenomena which accompany passion, the desires,
doubts, fears, which give it the force of illu-
sion and mirage, and which render it contagious.
There was confession if you will ; but the woman
knew not how to speak, the confessor how to listen;
she could not reveal the true depths of her thought;
and if she had, he would not have understood it.
Confession on one hand, sentence on the other, that
was all ; there was no conversation, confidence, im-
passioned communion.
If the priest has not sufficient wit and imagi-
nation to put questions, he has had for two cen-
turies a set of questions ready put, which he can em-
ploy at will, and by which he can force the penitent
to search into her inmost thoughts, to sift her own
secrets, to give them up entire, to open her heart
fibre by fibre, thread by thread, so to speak, and
to unravel before him the whole skein, which
thenceforward he holds in his hands.
This terrible instrument of inquiry, which in an
iniskilful hand m.ay corrupt the soul whilst search-
ing it, should at least change with the changes of
manners. Morality does not vary, but manners
vary with the times ; this simple truth was not sus-
pected. They have adhered to the manners of the
period when intellectual improvement ceased for
them. The manuals which are placed in the hands
of the young confessor are based on the casuists
whom Pascal has buried. Even if the immorality of
their solutions had not been demonstrated, remem-
ber that Escobar and Sanchez laid down questions
for a period of horrible corruption, from which,
thank God, we are far removed. Their casuistry
was at first addressed to the corrupt and disordered
state of society which the wars of religion left be-
hind them. You find it stating such or such a crime,
which perhaps was never committed but by the
fierce soldiers of the duke of Alba, or by the bands,
without country, without law, without God, who fol-
lowed Wallenstein, true wandering Sodoms, which
the old world would have held in horror.
I know not how to brand sufficiently this culpa-
ble routine! These books, made for a barbarous
epoch, unparalleled in atrocity, are the same which
now, in our advanced stage of civilization, you give
to your pupils.
And this young priest, who, from your account,
believes that the world is still this world of horrors,
who comes to the confessional * with all this abomi-
nable science, his imagination furnished with mon-
strous cases, you entrust him, imprudent that you
are (what shall I call you else ?) with the care of
a child who has not quitted her mother, who knows
nothing, has nothing to say, wlmse greatest crime
is to have ill-learnt her catechism, or hurt a but-
terfly !
I tremble at the interrogations to which she is to
be subjected, and at what he will teach her in his
conscientious brutality. But he asks in vain; she
knows nothing, and tells nothing. He scolds her,
and she weeps. Her tears will soon dry, but she
will think long. . , .
* Read the splendid pages of P. L. Courrier, and those of
M. Genin. The Jesuits and the Universily, part ii. ch. 5.
THE CONFESSOR AND THE HUSBAND.
45
A book might be made on the debut of the young
priest, on his imprudence, as all fatal to himself
as to others. The penitent is often more knowing
than the confessor. She smiles secretly at his
approach ; she looks coldly on him while he becomes
animated and presses her closely ". . . The man
who forgets himself in his impassioned dream is
suddenly awakened by the lesson which is given
him by a witty and satirical woman on her knees
before him !
Cruel lesson, which curdles his blood like the
stab of a sword. . , . Such a thing is not felt with-
out leaving long a bitterness behind, sometimes a
permanent malignity. The young priest well knew
that he was the victim, the disinherited in this
world; but he had not felt it. . . . A flood of gall
overflows his heart. He prays God for the death
of the world ! ... (if indeed he still prays to
God !)
Then, coming to himself, and beholding himself
ii'remediably wrapped in that black pall, in that
robe of death which he must carry into the grave,
he shrinks deep into it, whilst cursing it ; and
ponders on what advantage he shall reap from
his own sacrifice.
And the only thing he can do is to strengthen his
position as priest. This he may eff'ect in two ways,
by coming to an understanding with the Jesuits, and
by servile assiduity with my lord bishop. I re-
commend him above all things to be violent against
the philosophers, to bark about pantheism. Let
him also blacken his brethren, and he will whiten
himself the better. Let him prove himself a
thorough hater, and he will be pardoned for his
love.
The brotherhood will thenceforward protect him,
cover him. That which would have ruined the
isolated priest, becomes sanctity itself as soon as he
is a party man. He was on the point of being inter-
dicted, of being sent perhaps for six months to La
Trappe, and — he is made vicar-general.
Only let him be prudent, in the delicate aff"air
which the order loves to conceal ; let him learn
the arts of the priests — to feign, to wait, to know how
to contain himself, to advance but slowly, — along
the ground sometimes, but more often under
the ground.
CHAPTER in.
i CONFESSION. — THE CONFESSOR AND THE HUSBAND. —
HOW THE WIFE IS ISOLATED. — THE DIRECTOR. — THE
DIRECTORS ASSOCIATED. — ECCLESIASTICAL POLICE.
When I reflect on all that these words contain —
confession, direction, these little words, that great
power, the most complete that exists in the world,
— when I endeavour to analyze all it contains, I am
struck with awe. I seem to descend by the end-
less spiral stair-case of a deep and darksome mine.
... I was just pitying the priest, and now I fear
i him.
But we must not fear him ; we must look at him
face to face. Let us put in simple language the
words of the confessor.
* Read the witty and judicious little piece of Swift : Frag-
I nient on the Mechanical Operations of the Spirit (especially
I towards the end).
" God hears you, hears you through me ; by me God
will answer you." Such is the first word, which is
understood literally. The authority is accepted,
as infinite, absolute, without quan-elling about the
degree.
" But you hesitate ; you dare not tell to this ter-
rible God your weaknesses and childish acts. Well,
then, tell them to your father ; a father has a right
to know the secrets of his child, an indulgent
father, who desires to know only in order to ab-
solve. He is a sinner, like youi-sclf ; has he a
right to be severe ? Come, then, my child, come
and speak. . . . What you have not dared to
whisper to your mother, tell me ; who will ever
know it ?"
Then, then, amidst sighs from the heaving
bosom, the fatal word rises to the lips ; it escapes,
and she hides her face. . . Oh ! he who heard it,
has gained a gi-eat advantage, and will keep it.
God grant that he may not abuse his power ! , , .
Take care; that which has been said, was heard,
not by the wood, not by the black oak of the old
confessional ; but by a man of flesh and blood.
And this man now learns of this woman what
the husband has not known, in their long unbosom-
ings by night and by day, what is not known
to her mother, who imagines she knows her com-
pletely, having held her so often naked on her
knees.
This man knows it, will know it, and, be sure,
will not forget it ; if the confession is in good
hands, so much the better, for it is-for ever. She,
too, is conscious that there is one who is master
of her most private thoughts. Never will she
pass that man without lowering her eyes.
The day when this mystery was made the com-
mon property of both, he was very near her, she
felt it. . . . Seated above her, he wrought upon
her with invincible ascendancy. A magnetic force
subdued her; for she did not intend to say, and yet
she said it in spite of herself. She was fascinated,
like the bird by the serpent.
Up to this time, however, no art was used by
the priest. The force of circumstances did all,
the force of religious education and of nature. As
priest, he received her at his knees, and listened
to her. But the instant he is master of her secrets,
of her thoughts, of the thoughts of a woman, he
becomes again a man, without perhaps wishing or
knowing it, .and has laid upon her, enfeebled and
disarmed as she is, a man's heavy hand.
And the family now ? Tiie husband ? Who
will venture to say that his situation is the same
as before ?
Every man who reflects knows too well that
thought is the most pei'sonal part of the person.
The master of the thoughts is master of the per-
son. The priest holds the soul as soon as he has'
the dangerous pledge of the first secrets, and
he will hold it more and more. So here is a
partition made between the husbands, for there
will be now two, the soul to one, the body to the
other.
Remark, that in this partition, the whole really
belongs to one; if the other keeps anything it is
by sufferance. Thought, by its nature, is domi-
nant, absorbing ; the arbiter of the thoughts, in
the natural progress of this domination, will per-
petually reduce the portion which seemed to
remain to the other. It will be much if the hus-
4C
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
band, widowed from the soul, preserve the invohin-
:;ary, inert, and dead possession. What a humilia-
tion this, to obtain what once was yours only by
permission and indulgence *, to be seen, followed
in your most jjrivate intimacies, by an invisible
witness who regulates and apportions you your
share ; to meet in the street a man who knows
better than you do your most secret weaknesses,
who bows humbly, turns away and laughs. . . .
It is nothing to be powerful, if we are not the only
powerful. , . . The only ! God suffers none to
share his power.
This is the argument with which the priest comforts
himself in his persevering efforts to isolate this wo-
man, to enfeeble her family ties, to undermine, above
all things, the rival authority ; I mean that of the
husband. The husband is an incubus to the priest.
If the husband is a sufi'erer by being so well
known, watched, espied when he is alone, the
spy suffers still more. She comes constantly, and
innocently tells things which drive him beside
himself. Often he is on the point of stopping her
and of saying : " For pity's sake, madame, for-
bear ; this is too much !" And although these
details inflict upon him the tortures of the damned,
he asks for still more; he requires her to conde-
scend, in these avowals, humiliating to her, and
agonizing to him, to the most painful circumstan-
tialities.
The confessor of a young woman may be boldly
defined to be the envier of the husband, and his
secret enemy. If there be an exception to this
(and I willingly believe that there is), he is a
hero, a saint, a martyr, a man above humanity.
The whole labour of the confessor is to isolate
the woman, and he does so conscientiously. It is
the duty of him who leads her in the path of
salvation, to disengage her little by little from
earthly ties. This requii-es time, patience, address.
It is not possible to break at once such strong
bonds ; he must first discover of what threads
each bond is composed, and, thread by thi'ead,
file and wear it away.
He wears it away, and files it at his leisure, by
every day awakening new scruples, and disquieting
a timid soul by doubts of the legitimacy of the
most sacred attachment. If there be an innocent
one, it is, after all, a terrestrial tie, a robbery of
God ; God requires all. No more kindred, or
friendship, nothing must remain. " A brother ?"
No ; he, too, is a man. " But at least my sister ?
my mother?" No ; you must quit all. Quit them
in mind and in intention ; you may still behold
them, my daughter; nothing will appear changed,
only close your heart.
A moral solitude now reigns in her dwelling.
Friends retire repelled by an icy politeness. Her
house is an ice-bath. Why this strange reception?
They cannot guess the reason ; even she does not
always know it. The thing is commanded, is not
that enough? Obedience consists in obeying with-
out reason.
People are cold here ; that is all that can be
said. The husband finds the house dull and more
empty. His wife has become quite a different per-
son, her mind is absent; she acts, as if not acting;
she speaks, as if not speaking. Everything is
• Francois de Sales, the best of them all, takes compa's-
tion on the poor husband, and removes certain scruples of
the wife's, &c. (See ed. 183,3, t. viii p. 254, 312, 347, 348 )
changed in their domestic habits, always for a
good reason : " To-day is a fast day." " And to-
morrow — ?" " Is a festival." The husband re-
spects this austerity ; he is scrupulous not to dis-
turb this devotion ; and resigns himself with a
sigh : " This is getting annoying," says he, " I had
not foreseen it ; my wife is becoming a saint."
In this same house there are fewer friends, but
there is a new and very assiduous one. The
habitual confessor is now the director *; a great
and a considerable change.
- As confessor, he received her in the church,
at stated hours. As director, he visits her at his
own hours, sees her at her house, sometimes at
his own.
Confessor, he was for the most part passive,
listened much, spoke little ; if he prescribed, it
was in few words. Director, he is active ; not
only he prescribes acts, but what is more impor-
tant, by intimate conversation, influences every
thought.
To the confessor we tell our sins ; we owe him
nothing more. To the director, we tell all, every-
thing relating to us and ours, our affairs, our
interests. If we confide to him our greatest in-
terest, the interest of eternal salvation, wherefore
keep from him our little temporal interests, the
marriage of our children, the will we intend making,
&c. &c. ?
The confessor is bound to secrecy, he must
be silent (or ought to be silent). The director
is not thus bound. He may reveal what he knows,
especially to a priest, to another director. Sup-
pose in one house twenty priests (or fewer, in
order to escape the law of association), some of
whom are the confessors, others the directors
of the same persons ; as directors, they may ex-
change their information, they may throw upon
one table a thousand or two thousand consciences,
calculate the moves, as if at a game of chess,
regulate every interest beforehand, and distribute
among each other the parts which they must play
to bring about their own ends.
The Jesuits alone formerly worked thus to-
gether. It is not the fault of the leaders of the
clergy if the whole body, in its trembling obe-
dience, does not play the villainous game-f. All
communicating with all, there would result from
these revealed secrets, a vast and mysterious
science, which would arm the ecclesiastical police
with a hundred times more power than that of the
state itself.
What was wanting in the confession of the mas-
ters would be easily supplied by that of the do-
mestics, valets, servants. The association of the
Blandines of Lyons, imitated in Brittany, Paris,
and elsewhere, would alone suffice to lay bare the
interior of every household. They may be known,
but are not the less employed ; they are gentle
and docile, serve their masters well, know how
to see and listen.
Happy father of a family, with so virtuous a
wife, and such domestics, gentle, humble, honest,
and pious. Thus what the ancient desired, to
• The name is now rare, the thing common. He who
confesses for a long time, becomes director. Many persons
have at the same time the confessor, the extraordinary con-
fessor, and the director.
t This is known from those priests who will not lend
themselves to tlie system.
THE POWER OF HABIT.
47
live in a house of glass, so that every one might
always see you, you have without wishing it.
Not a word of yours is lost. You speak low, but
sharp ears hear it all. You write your private
thoughts, unwilling to speak them ; they are read,
— by whom ? No one knows. What you dream
of nights you are astonished to hear on the morrow
in the sti'eet.
CHAPTER IV.
habit: its power; its insensible beginning; its
progress; a second nature; and often fatal.
— a man taking advantage of the powea op
habit. — can we escape?
If spiritual dominion be truly spiritual, if the
thought be conquered by thought itself, by supe-
riority of character and mind, then we must sub-
mit ; nothing is left but resignation. The family
will object to it in time, but will object in vain.
Generally, however, this is far from being tlie
case. The influence of which we speak by no means
supposes, as an essential condition, any brilliant
mental endowments. They serve doubtless him
who possesses them, and yet, if he possess them in
an eminent degree, they may injure him. Striking
superiority, which seems always a pretension to
govern others, puts men on their guard, warns the
least prudent, and prevents their reposing that
confidence which is the secret of the whole
triumph *. The mediocre do not excite alarm,
and are admitted without suspicion. The more
feeble they are, the less suspected they are, the
stronger they are in one sense. Iron grates
against the rock ; its edge turns and becomes
blunted. But who would mistrust water ? Soft,
colourless, insipid, if nevertheless it always falls in
the same place, it hollows at last the pebble and
the rock.
Place yourself at that window every day at a
certain hour in the afternoon. You will behold
pass in the street a pale man who looks on the
ground, always passing along the same street, al-
ways keeping the same side of the street. Where
he placed his foot yesterday, he places it to-day,
and will place it to-morrow ; he will wear out the
granite if it be not renewed. And by this same
street, he goes to the same house, he ascends the
same staircase, and in the same boudoir he
speaks to the same person. He speaks of the
same things, and seems to speak in the same
way. The person who listens sees no difference
between yesterday and to-day. Even uniformity,
and sweet as the slumber of a child, whose respira-
tion swells its breast at equal intervals, with the
same slight murmur.
You think that nothing changes in this mono-
tonous evenness, that one day is the same as the
other. Good ; you have felt nothing, and yet
every day there is a change, slight, it is true, im-
perceptible, which the person, changed little by little
hei'self, remarks not at all.
It is like a reverie on board a vessel. How far
have you gone during your reverie ? You can-
• Romance writers rarely comprehend this. Most of them
begin by an adventure, a surprising circumstance, and this
is precisely what puts the reader on his guard.
not tell. You advance without advancing, im-
moveable and yet move rapidly. Emerging from
the river or canal you arc soon in the open sea ;
the immense uniformity which surrounds you will
allow you still less to perceive the advance you
make. Place and time vanish ; there is no marked
point on which the attention can be fixed ; atten-
tion itself ceases. Profounder still is the reverie,
and still, still profounder — an ocean of dreams on
the soft ocean of waters.
Sweet state, in which little by little every thing
becomes insensible, even weakness itself. State of
death or life ? To discover this would require at-
tention, and for that the reverie must bo broken. . .
No, let it have its way, that indefinable thing which
hurries me away, whether it lead me to life or lead
me to death.
Habit ! habit ! gentle yet formidable abyss, down
which we slide so gently ! of thee may be said all
the harm in the world, and all the good likewise ;
and it would be all true.
Let us confess the truth : if the action which was
at first done with a full knowledge and voluntarily,
could never be performed but with will and at-
tention, if it did not become habitual and easy, we
should act seldom and slowly ; life would pass in
attempts and efforts. If, at each step we take, we
had to ponder whether we were going the right
way, and whether we were keeping our centre of
gravity, we should scarcely walk better than the
child learning to walk. But walking soon becomes
a habit, an action, which is accomplished without its
being necessary to invoke the continual interven-
tion of the will. It is so with many other acts,
v/hich less voluntary still, at last become me-
chanical, automatic, and strangers as it were to
our personality. As we advance in life, a notable
portion of our activity escapes our consciousness,
emerges from the sphere of liberty to enter that of
habit, becomes in some sort fatal ; the remainder,
relieved from the constant necessity of attention
and effort, becomes in turn more free to act else-
where.
This has its advantages and disadvantages. The
force of habit steals upon us until we ai'e its
slave. That which once atti-acted our attention,
to-day passes unperceived. What once was diffi-
cult, is now become easy, too easy ; indeed, it is
not possible to say even that it is easy, for it
comes to pass of itself, without our will ; we suffer
if it is not done. These acts being, of all others,
those which cost the least trouble, are constantly
repeated ; and, at last, a second nature is formed,
which, created at the expense of the other, in
great part takes its place. We forget the diffi-
culties of the first beginnings, and we imagine
that it was always so. This at least favours our
idleness, and spares us from making any efforts'
to arrest ourselves on the brink. Besides, all
trace of change disappears at length, the mind is
destroyed ; if we would reconstruct it, we cannot.
It is like a bridge, broken down behind us ; we
have passed and cannot pass back.
We resign ourselves then, and we say, endea-
vouring to smile, "/< is to me a second nature ;" or
even, "It is my nature." So much liave we for-
gotten !
But between this nature and our ti-ue primordial
nature which we received at our birth, there is a
serious difference ; namely, that that which we
48
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
dei'ived from our mother's womb, was like the mo-
ther herself, the watchful guardian of our life,
which warned us of wliatever might compromise
us, which searched for and tenderly found a remedy
for our ills. But habit, this second nature, under
this treacherous name, is often nothing else than
the high road which leads to death.
" It is my second nature," sadly says the opium-
eater, on beholding die by his side the victim who
had contracted the fatal habit some few months
earlier than he ; " I have still so many months
to live." " It is my second nature," says the
wretched child, devoted victim of solitary pleasures.
Nothing is a cm-e ; neither reason, nor punishment,
nor maternal grief. Both go on to the last along
that road which cannot be retraced.
A vulgar proverb (in this case i-eally true) says:
" He who has drunk, will drink." We must gene-
ralize it ; " He who has acted, icill act ; " " He icho
has suffered, will suffer." Why, this is still more
true of passive than of active habits. Accustomed
to let things take their course, to suffer, to enjoy,
we become incapable of resuming activity. At
last, even the bait of enjoyment is not required.
When that is dried up, and pain takes its place,
the inexorable habit still fills up the same cup ; it
does not then even take the pains to dissemble ;
we recognize it too late, hideous, incurable, and it
coldly says : " You at first drank the honey, now
you shall drink gall to the last drop."
If this tyrant is so strong when it acts blindly,
when it is only a thing, as opium or gin, what must
it be when it has eyes, a will, an art, — in a word,
when it is a man ? — a man full of cunning, who
knows how to create, to foster a habit to his ad-
vantage ; a man, who as a first means, has against
you your beliefs ; who, begins with the authority of
a respected position the woi'k of personal fascina-
tion ; and who has daily opportunities for exercis-
ing it over you until it grows into a habit, who has
days, months, years to work in ; who has time at his
command irresistible time, conquering all human
things ; time, that eats through iron and brass. . . .
Is the lieart of a woman cajjable of resisting it ?
A woman ? A child ? Still less, a person who
desires to be a child, who employs all the faculties
she has been acquiring from childhood to enable
her to fall again into a state of childhood ; who di-
rects her will for the purpose of annihilating her
will, her thought to destroy thought, and who gives
herself up as if asleep.
Suppose her to awake (a case which rarely hap-
pens), to awake for a moment, that she surprises
the tyrant without his mask, that she sees him
as he is, and desires to escape. . . Do you think
she has the power* ? . . To escape it is necessary
to act; and she knows no longer what this is, hav-
ing so long given up all action ; her members are
stiff; her limbs paralyzed, know not how to
move ; the heavy hand is raised, falls, and says.
No.
Then it is you feel what habit is, and how, once
tied with its imperceptible threads, you remain
joined, in spite of yourself, to this cheat you detest.
The threads are not the less strong, because the
• Tliis reminds us of the adventure of the enchanter Mer-
lin, who, at the prayer of Viviane, lays himself of his own
accord in his tomb ; but he forgets the words by which he
was to deliver himself, and remains there, and will remain
until the day of judgment.
eye cannot see them ; feeble and yielding, to all
appearance, you may break them, but you will find
more beneath : it is a double, triple net. Who can
discover its thickness ?
I once read in an old story a highly striking and
significant circumstance. A woman, a wandering
princess, after many fatigues, is said to have found
shelter in the midst of a forest *, in a deserted
palace. It was delightful to rest there, to sojourn
awhile ; she walked for some time up and down
without an obstacle, in great empty chambers,
where she believed herself alone and free. All the
doors were open. Only in the great entrance por-
tal, no one having cross^ed the threshold sinceherself
a spider had spread his web in the sun, a fine, light,
almost invisible texture. This feeble obstacle the
princess, desiring at length to depart, thought she
could overcome without difficulty. She raised it
accordingly ; but there was another behind it,
which too was easily raised. The second covered
a third, which must also be raised. . . Strange !
there are four . . no, five ; or rather six . . and
others still ! Ah ! how raise so many curtains ?
She already begins to be fatigued. . . No matter !
she perseveres ; after taking breath a little, she
may be able to continue. But the web continues
also, and ever renews itself with obstinate malice.
What shall she do ? She succumbs to fatigue ; she
is bathed in perspiration; her arms fall by her side.
At length she sits down exhausted on the ground,
on that msurmountable threshold ; and gazes sadly
on the aerial obstacle which dances in the wind, light,
yet triumphant. Poor princess, poor fly, you are
taken ! Why did you pause in that fairy mansion,
and allow the spider time to weave his net ?
CHAPTER V.
CONVENTS. — OMNIPOTENCE OF THE DIRECTOR. — STATE
OF THE FORLORN NUN UNDER THE SPlf SYSTEM. — CON-
VENTS WHICH ARE AT THE SAME TIME PRISONS AND
MADHOUSES. — FORTUNE-HUNTING. — BARBAROUS DISCI-
PLINE.— STRUOCiLE BETWEEN THE SUPERIOR AND THE
DIRECTOR. — CHANGE OF DIRECTOR. — THE MAGISTRATE.
I LIVED, fifteen years ago, in a very solitary neigh-
bourhood, in a house, the garden of which was next
to that of a nunnery. Although my windows
overlooked the greater part of their garden, I
had never seen my sad neighbours. In the month
of May, on Rogation day, I heard numerous voices,
but feeble ones, very feeble, chanting prayers
in the garden of the convent. The chant grated
on the ear, was hai'sli and out of tune, as if the
voices had been made false by suffering. I thought
for a moment Irecognized the prayer for the dead ;
but on listening more attentively I distinguished
on the contrary: " Te rogamus, audi nos!" the
song of hope which calls down upon fruitful nature
the blessings of the God of life. This sung of May
sung by these dead women struck me as a grievous
contrast, as I watched on the flowery sward those
pale girls, destined never to flower. The remem-
• "Thick, sombre, and wild forest! The very thought
of it again overwhelms me with fear ! How did I enter it f
I cannot tell ; so full was I of slumber when I left the right
path !" Dante, Inferno.
OMNIPOTENCE OF THE DIRECTOR.
49
brance of the middle age which at first came over
me soon departed : at that time monastic life
was connected with a thousand things ; but in
our modern harmony, what is it but an outrage
on common-sense, a harsh and jarring discord ? I
could not defend what I beheld, either by nature,
or by history. I shut my window and sadly took
up my book. This sight was painful to me, being
neither softened nor elevated by any public senti-
ment. It reminded me less of virginity than of
sterile widowhood, a state of vacancy, of impotence,
of ennui, of intellectual * and moral fasting in which
these unfortunate creatures are kept by their abso-
lute rulers.
We have spoken of habit ; it is here that it
reigns tyrannically. It does not require much art
to rule these poor isolated women, shut up, depen-
dent, with whom nothing from without counter-
balances the impression which one person, and
always the same person, makes on them every day.
The least skilful may easily fascinate a nature en-
feebled and bent to the most servile and trembling
obedience. Ah ! there is little courage and merit
in governing thus that which is already broken.
To speak first only of the power of habit; nothing
which we see in the world of the living can give
an idea of the power with which it acts in this little
confined world. We are modified, doubtless, by
family intercourse, but its influence is neutralized
by external events. The regularity of the favour-
ite journal which comes every morning to sound the
same sound influences us of course; but this journal
has others to combat it. An influence which is less
felt in our time, but which is still powerful over
persons who live in solitude, is that of a great work,
the fascinating reading of which occupies months,
years. Diderot acknowledges that Clarissa, read,
re-read, constituted for a long time his whole life,
Joy, sorrow, storm and sunshine. The most beau-
tiful of books, nevertheless, is still a dumb thing,
which, however animated it is, does not hear,
cannot answer objections; it has no words where-
with to answer your words ; no eyes to reflect
your eyes.
Away with these cold images of papers and books!
Imagine in a solitude where nothing else can
penetrate, the one living thing, the only person
who has a right to enter, who stands in the place of
all the influences of which we have spoken, who
is, in himself, family, newspaper, novel, and ser-
mon ; a person whose coming alone breaks the
tediousuess of an unoccupied life. Before he
comes, ajter he has gone, is, in that profound state
of ennui, the only division of the hours.
We have said a person, we must add, a man.
* I have spoken above of the sister Marie Lemonnier,
persecuted for having known too well how to write, to paint
flowers, &c. — " My confessor," she says, " forbade me to
pick flowers and to paint them. Unfortunately, in walking
in the garden with the nuns, I saw on the border of the turf
two wild poppies which I inadvertently plucked in passing.
One of the sisters saw me, and ran forward to tell the
superior, who came back instantly, made me open my
hand, and, seeing the flowers, told me, 1 should remember
this. And when the confessor came in the evening, she
accused me before him of disobedience for having picked
some flowers. In vain I protested that it was unintention-
ally, and that they were only wild poppies; I could not
obtain permission to confess myself." — Note of Sister Marie
Lemnnnier, in the Memoire of M. Tillard. The Journals and
Reviews of March, 1845, gave extracts from it.
Any one who speaks honestly will confess that a
woman would not produce this eflFect; that the
difference of sex has much to do with the matter,
even with the most pure and with those to whom
the idea of sex has never occurred.
To thus be the unique, without comparison, with-
out contradiction, to be the world of a soul ; to
wean it from the recollection of whatever might
seem a rival, to efface from that docile heart even
the thought of a mother which might still remain
there * ; to inherit all, remain there alone, and
monopolize complete dominion over it by the ex-
tinction of all natural ties.
To be unique is to be the good, the perfect, the
amiable, the beloved. . . . Enumerate all admirable
qualities, and they will be summed up in this one
word. Not to speak of persons, things even, if
unique, will at last take possession of the heart.
By constantly beholding the same view from his
palace — a lake and the emerald sward which encir-
cled it, Charlemagne at length grew enamoured of
the scene.
Habit does much ; but so does the pressing ne-
cessity that the heart feels of telling all to whatever
is constantly before our eyes, whether man or thing.
Were it a stone, one would tell it all. Our thoughts
must overflow ; and the griefs of a surcharged
heart will find vent.
Do you think this poor nun can resign herself
contentedly to so uniform a life 1 Ah ! what sad
confessions I could quote here, too true confessions,
conveyed by tender friends whose bosoms have been
bathed with the tears of the anguished recluse . . .
and who have returned, heart-broken, to weep to
me.
The best wish to make for the prisoner is that
she may become dead in heart, if not in the body.
If she be not bruised and crushed so far as to for-
get what she has been, she will undergo in her cell
the pangs of remembering the world and the bitter-
ness of solitude at one and the same time. She
will be alone, without the power of being alone f !
She is at once deserted and spied !
• If is often byamereinstinct of tyranny, that the superiors
take pleasure in breaking the ties of kindred. "The cure
of my parish exhorted me to write to my father, who had
just lost my mother. J allowed Advent to pass, during
which nuns are not allowed to write letters, and the last
days of the month which are spent in solitude in the insti-
tution, to prepare for the renewal of our vows, which is done
on New-year's day. But, after the ceremony, I hastened to
fulfil my duty towards the best of fathers, by tendering him
my most earnest prayers and wishes, and by endeavouring
to give him some consolation in the affliction and trials
through which it had pleased God to lead him. I went to
the cell of the superior to beg her to read my letter, to apply
the seal of the convent and to forward it: but she was not
there. I placed it accordingly in my cell on the table, and
■went to prayers ; during which the Reverend Superior, who
knew that I had written, because she had sent one of the
nuns to see what I was doing, made a sign to one of the sis-
ters, and sent her to take my letter. She did this seven
times following when I wrote ; so that my father died, five
months afterwards, without having been able to obtain a
letter which he desired from me, and which he had de-
manded on his death-bed through the cure of his parish."
Note nf Sister Lemonnier, in the Memoire of JI. Tillard. See
also the National, March, 1845.
t The preliminary confession of nuns to the superior,
which is passed over lightly in the first fervour of prose-
lytism, soon becomes a source of intolerable vexation.
Complaints of this are heard even in Madame de Chantal's
50
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
Deserted ! This nun, still young, but aged by
grief and fasting, was yesterday a boarder, a novice
surrounded by attentions. The friendships of the
younger, the maternal caresses of the elder, the
attraction of this nun or that confessor, have con-
spired to deceive her and to lead her gently on to
everlasting seclusion. We almost always fancy
ourselves called by God, when following the impulse
of this or that pleasing person, whose devotion is
cheerful and seducing, and who takes a delight in
this kind of spiritual conquest. One gained over,
she turns to another ; and no longer bestows a
thought on the poor sister who had followed in the
belief of being loved.
Alone, in a solitude unsoothed by meditation or
by rest ; how sweet, in comparison, would be the
solitude of the woods ! The very trees would feel
pity : they are not so hard as they look, but hear
and listen.
The woman's heart, the mother's heart, that un-
conquerable maternal instinct which is woman's
essence, seeks to beguile itself. Our young nun
soon chooses some young friend, some guileless
companion, some favourite pupil. . . . Alas ! she
will be deprived of this solace. Jealous sisters are
never wanting to bring charges against the purest
attachments, in order to pay court to the higher
powers. The devil is jealous — in God's interests ;
he enters his protest on behalf of God alone.
What wonder if this woman is sad, if she grows
sadder and sadder, seeks the gloomiest alleys, and
loathes conversation ! But now her love of soli-
tude is imputed to her as a crime. She is marked
out, suspected, watched and spied by all. ... In
the day-time ? That is not enough. She is ob-
served during the night, has spies upon her sleep,
and the words she may murmur in her dreams are
noted down.
The horror of being watched thus closely, night
and day, must strangely trouble and disorder the
mind. Gloomy hallucinations supervene, and evil
dreams beset the poor being in open day and when
wide awake : her reason gives way. You know the
visions engraved by Piranesi — vast subterranean
prisons, deep wells without air, staircases without
an end, bridges which lead to yawning gulphs, low
arches, catacombs whose narrow corridors grow
closer and closer. ... In these fearful prisons,
which are themselves positive torture, you have
glimpses of instruments of torture besides, of wheels,
chains, whips. . . .
What, I ask you, is the difference betwixt the
convents of the present day and bridewells, or be-
tween them and madhouses * ? . . . Many of our
convents seem to combine the characteristics of all
three.
life-time. See her Lettres, t. ii. p. 228, 272, 346 ; and Fichet,
256. Compare Ribadeneira, Vie de Sainte Tlierdse.
• Sister Marie Lemonnier was imprisoned with mad
women; and found amongst them a Carmelite nun, who had
been shut up there for nine years. The third volume of
the Wandering Jew contains the real history of Mademoi-
selle B. ; which took place recently, not in a lunatic asylum,
but in a convent. Since the opportunity is presented of
saying a word to our admirable novelist, let him allow me to
ask him wherefore he has drawn such a beau-ideal of the
Jesuists ; when every one knows that various dignitaries of
the order have immortalized tliemselves by their folly ? It
is difficult to believe that such empty writers are strong-
headed men and deep schemers. I look for Ilodins and see
only Loriquets.
I can only detect one difference ; namely, that
the bridewells are under the superintendence of
the magistracy, and the madhouses under that of
the police — both of which stop at the convent door;
where the law turns pale, and dares not step across
the threshold.
A strict superintendence and precise classifica-
tion of convents are, however, the more indis-
pensable now, inasmuch as they differ in a very
serious point from the convents of the olden time.
The convents of the last century were, strictly
speaking, hospitable houses {hospices), in which
noble families, living according to their rank, or
else those of the wealthier bourgeoisie, placed one
or more of their daughters in order to enrich
their eldest son, and where they were maintained
for life in consideration of the dower they brought.
Once encaged, it was their own look-out whether
they lived or died : none gave themselves any
more concern about them. At the present day
nuns may be heiresses, and so become a mark and a
prey for the manifold snares of the inveigler— an
easy prey in their captive and dependent position.
A superior, full of zeal to enrich the community,
has infallible means of constraining the nun to
give up her property. Under pretexts of de-
votion and of penance she can humiliate, harass,
and maltreat her even a hundred times a day, and
drive her to despair. Who can mark the limit
where asceticism ends and inveigling begins — the
Compelle intrare (Force to enter) applied to for-
tune ? So great is the predominance of financial
and business considerations in convents, that ca-
pacity in this department is prized above all quali-
fications of a superior order. Many of those
ladies are capital men of business ; and there is
one well known at Paris by the notaries and law-
yers, as able to instruct them in regard to gifts,
inheritances, and wills. Paris need no longer envy
Bologna that fair and learned jurisconsult, who
would occasionally lecture, veiled, in her father's
chair.
Our modern laws, the laws of the Revolution,
which, in their equity, have willed that daughter
and younger son should share in the property left,
are here powerful instruments working for the
Counter- Revolution ; and here we find the reason
of the rapid and marvellous increase of religious
houses. Lyons, which, in 1789, had only forty
convents, has sixty-three now *. Nothing checks
the zeal of monastic recruiters for the salvation of
rich souls. You see them frisking round heirs
and heiresses. . . What a prize for the young
peasants who people our seminaries is this per-
spective of power : once priests, they may govern
forttmes as well as consciences f .
• I quote from memory the calculations of M. Lortet in
1843.
t And all these persons buy, sell, lend on pledge. Pre-
lates speculate in lands and buildings, Lazarists turn agents
for the supply of substitutes for military service, &c., Sjc.
The latter, who are the successors of St. Vincent de Paul,
and the directors of our Sisters of Charity, have had their
charity so blessed by God as to have realized a capital of
twenty millions (of francs). Their general at the present
moment, M. Etienne, late solicitor to the order, had previ-
ously been their agent in a distillery company. The import-
ant lawsuit at present pending will decide whether the obli-
gations contracted for the society by a general whose power
is absolute and uncontrolled, are nullified by a change of
general.
STRUGGLE 'BETWEEN THE SUPERIOR AND DIRECTOR.
51
Legacy-hunting, which has its checks in the
world, has none in convents, where it is so mucli
the more dangerous as being practised on im-
prisoned and dependent persons, and where it
may be pushed to fearful extremes with impunity.
Who can be aware of it ? Who dares enter there 1
No one *. . . . Strange, there are houses in our
country which are not France. . . • This street is
still France ; cross that threshold, you are in a
foreign land which mocks your laws.
And what are their laws ? No one knows.
What we do know for a certainty, and which is
not concealed, is that the barbarous discipline
of the middle age + prevails there and is per-
petuated. Cruel contradiction ! This system, which
talks so much of the distinction betwixt the soul
and body, and which believes in this distinction,
or it would not boldly bring the confessor in con-
tact with carnal temptations — this very system,
mark, believes that the body, distinct as it is from
the soul, yet modifies the latter by its sufferings,
and that the soul is amended and purified by
lashes J. , . Spiritualist, when it emboldens itself
to affront the temptations of the flesh ; materialist
when the task is to subdue the will !
What ! when the law prohibits the personal
chastisement of thieves, murderers, of the most
brutal of mankind confined in the galleys (bagties)
— you, men of grace, with charity ever on your
lips, and ever talking of the kind and holy Vmjin
and the sweet Jesus, you dare to lay your hands on
women ; on women, do I say? on girls and children
whose sole faults are a few natural weaknesses !
How are these chastisements administered? Here
we come to a graver question still. What is the
sort of composition struck under the influence of
fear ? At what price does authority sell indulgence?
Who regulates the number of strokes ? Is it
you, my lady abbess, or you, father superior ?
How arbitrary, capricious, and exposed to the in-
fluences of passion must be the uncontrolled power
of one woman over another in case of offence — say
that it is an ugly woman jealous of a handsome
one, on an old woman piqued by a younger : 'tis
fearful to think of !
And here a strange struggle often takes place be-
tween the abbess and the director. The latter,
however hardened he may be, is still a man ; and
it is most likely that the poor girl who tells him
every thing and obeys him in every thing, will at
last manage to soften him. This, the female supe-
rior is quick to detect, and she follows and watches
him closely. He is allowed to see his penitent but
for a short time, a very short time; and short as it
is, it always seems too long. The confession is to
last so many minutes, and he is waited for, watch
in hand ; for, without this precaution, the con-
fession would be sure to be protracted, A com-
passionate confessor is, in point of fact, the eujoy-
♦ A magistrate having ventured to enter a convent at
Sens, one of the neo-catholic papers expressed a regret that
he was not flung out of the window.
t See the preface to the third edition.
X Has not this frightful art, which does not rouse man's
energies by pain but depresses hira by the discipline and
cruelties of the dungeon, turned the influence of the body
to good account? (See Mabillon's Treatise on the Monastic
Prisons, in the second volume of his posthumous works.)
The revelations of the prisoners of Spielberg have enlight-
ened us considerably on this point.
ment of liberty for the poor recluse, who ex-
periences at all other hours nothing but insult and
bad treatment.
Superiors have been known to ask and obtain
from the bishop repeated changes of confessor,
without finding any strict enough to suit their pur-
poses. Wide is the interval between the sternness
of man and the cruelty of a woman ! Who, now,
do you take to be the truest incarnation of the
devil in this world ? . . . This inquisitor, that
Jesuit ? No; it is a Jesuitess, some great lady con-
verted, who believes herself born for government,
who, amidst this flock of trembling women, affects
the Bonaparte, and who, more absolute than the
most absolute tyrant, employs the rage of ill-cured
passions in tormenting these hapless and defence-
less beings who are at her mercy.
Far from being opposed to the confessor in this
struggle, my wishes go with him. Whether priest,
monk, or Jesuit, I am of his party, I beseech him
to interfere, if in his power. He is still, in this
hell, into which the law does not find its way, the
only person to speak a humane word, , , . I know,
indeed, that this interference will create the strong-
est and most dangerous of bonds : the poor crea-
ture's heart is given up to her defender, in ad-
vance.
This priest will be removed, expelled, ruined if
necessary. An active, influential abbess finds this
an easy matter. But he does not run the risk*.
He fears exciting a clamour, and timidly retires.
You will meet with neither priest nor prelate
who will remember his powers as confessor and
spiritual judge in a predicament of the kind, and
who will refuse the tyrant of the nuns absolution, as
Las Casas did to those who tyrannized over the
Indians.
Happily, there are other judges. The law slum-
bers f, but still lives. Courageous magistrates are
not wanting to do their duty J; and no doubt they
will be allowed to do it. . . . Their rest is disturbed
by thoughts of what is going on. They know that
every act of violence committed, every lash in-
flicted in contempt of the law, cries out accus-
ingly against themselves in the face of heaven and
earth! . . . Exsurge, Domine, et judica causam
tuam! (Arise, O Lord, and judge thy own
cause !)
* I find this confirmed by the notes of the nun already
alluded to. See the preface to the third edition.
t The proceedings at Avignon, Sens, and Poitiers, not-
withstanding the slight punishment awarded the guilty,
aiTord a hope that the law will vindicate its powers. — I ob-
serve the following in one of the Caen papers: — "It was
reported in the law-courts yesterday that the attorney-general
was about to bring on not only the case of Sister Marie,
who was confined in her convent, but that of Sister Sainte-
Placide, whose liberation was demanded of the Sub-Prefet
of Bayeux on the 1 3th of August last by the solicitor-general j
and, moreover, that of Mademoiselle H . . ., of Rouen, who
was removed from the establishment of Bon-Sauveur at the
instance of the king's attorney-general at Rouen." National,
March 10th, 1845.
X The superintendence of convents ought to be vested in
the judicial magistracy, the municipal magistracy, and the
office of charitable trusts ; the bench has too many claims
on its attention to take it all upon itself.— If houses of the
sort are necessary as asylums for poor women who cannot
earn their living by the unassisted labour of their own hands,
they ought to be free asylums such as the beguinages of
Flanders; under very dilTerent spiritual guidance, how-
ever.
k2
52
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
CHAPTER VI.
ABSORPTION OF THE WILL. — TYRANNY OVER ACTS,
THOUGHTS, AND WILLS. — ASSIMILATION. — TraUSku-
manation. — becoming the god op another. —
PRIDE. — IMPOTENCE. — PRIDE AND CONCUPISCENCE.
If we believe politicians, to reign is happiness.
They are sincere in thinking so, since they accept
in exchange endless fatigue and trouble, and often
undergo such martyrdom as the very saints would
have refused.
Only you must really reign. Can making ordi-
nances which are never executed, and dismissing,
with great efforts and paeans of victory, another
law to go to sleep on the dusty shelves where slum-
ber some thirty thousand other statutes, be called
reigning ?
To ordain acts is nothing, if one is not first
master of thoughts. To rule the world of bodies,
you must rule that of minds. This is what the
thinker, the powerful writer says, and he thinks
he is reigning. In fact he is a king ; at least as
regards posterity. If he is truly an original writer,
he outstrips his age and is laid aside to a future
day. He will reign to-morrow, the day after to-
morrow, for ages and ages, and with growing ab-
soluteness of power. As i-egards the present day,
he will be alone ; each triumph will cost him a
friend. I am willing to believe that he will ac-
quire new friends, innumerable and ardent ones.
Those whom he loves were, no doubt, far inferior ;
but it was they whom he loved ; those who take
their place he will never see. . . Toil on, then,
disinterested man, toil on ; thy reward will be a
little noise and smoke. Does not this pay thee
well ? king of the time which is yet to come, thou
wilt live and die empty-handed. Thou hast picked
up a shell, child as thou art, on the shore of this
unknown sea of ages, and boldest it to thy ear to
catch murmurings in which thou fanciest thou
canst recognize thy own name.
But here is one, on the contrary, who, whilst
proclaiming his kingdom to be of above, has adroitly
surprised the reality here below. He lets you go
on seeking unknown worlds at your ease ; for he
has seized on this world of thine, poor dreamer —
on this beloved nest, whither thou madest certain
of returning and cherishing thyself. . . Thou hast
thyself alone to accuse ; 'tis thy own fault. Thy
eyes turned towards the dawn, thou forgettest thy-
self whilst striving to descry the first ray of the fu-
ture. And when, shortly after, thou hast come
back to thyself, thou findest another in possession
of the dear spot which holds thy heart.
Sovereignty over ideas is not sovereignty over
wills. The latter are only to be mastered by the
will itself ; not by a vague and general, but by
a special, personal will, which attaches itself per-
severingly to an individual, over whom it has true
sovereignty, because it has moulded him, or her, in
its own image.
To reign, is to reign over a soul. What are
all thrones compared to such a royalty ? What,
in comparison, is dominion over the unknown
crowd ? . . The truly ambitious steer clear of any
mistake of the kind, and do not waste their eff'orts
in extending a weak and uncertain power which
loses by extension ; they aim, preferentially, at
rendering their power a solid, vmchangeable pos-
session, increasing in intensity.
The goal thus fixed, the priest has a great ad-
vantage beyond all others. He has to do with one
who deliters up himself. The grand obstacle in the
way of every other species of authority is their
want of familiarity with those they control. They
see them from an external *, the priest from an in-
ternal point of view. Whether of superior or of
moderate abilities, by virtue only of fears and
hopes, by the magic key which unlocks the world
to come, he unlocks the heart as well ; and that
heart desires even to be unlocked — its sole fear
being lest it conceal any thing. It does not see
and know itself in its every part ; but where its
own self-knowledge fails, the priest can manage
to penetrate and to see and know clearly, by a
comparison of the opinions entertained by ser-
vants, friends, and relatives. If he is a man of
talent, he can concentrate all these lights into one
focus, which, brought to bear upon the object,
shows it transparent ; so that he is cognizant not
only of its actual, but of its future feelings, dis-
cerning in the instincts and sentiments of the day
what will be the thoughts of the morrow. His
knowledge of this said heart is a real knowledge ;
he sees it as it is, and he sees it as it will be.
A unique science is this, and which would remain
inexplicable but for the one solution. — If it knoics
its man so thoroughly, the reason is that it niakcs
him what he is. The director makes the directed ;
the latter is his work, and at last becomes identical
with himself. How can the former be ignorant of
the ideas and wishes which he himself has prompted,
and which are his own ? Through this constant
action of one mind on the other, transfusion takes
place between the two ; so that the weaker nature,
receiving all its impressions from the otherf , be-
comes at last extinct. Growing daily feebler and
more indolent, it makes its happiness at last consist
in no longer having a will of its own, and in seeing
this troublesome will, which has too long been a
source of torment, for ever disappear. Even so the
wounded man sees his life's blood flowing, and feels
the lighter for it.
Now, who will compensate you for this evapora-
tion of moral personality by which you escape from
yourself ? who will fill up the void ? . . . Letters two
give the answer — He.
He, the patient and the crafty, who, day by day,
taking from you a little of yourself, and replacing
what he takes away with a little of himself, has
quietly evaporated the one and put the other in
its stead. The soft and weak nature of woman,
almost as fluid as that of the infant, is easily dis-
posed to transfusion. A woman who always sees
the same man acquires unconsciously his turn of
mind, his accent, his language, and even to his
* Confession, though imperfect, even that sort of confes-
sion which is made to the judge, is of great assistance to the
moralist and painter of manners. Thus Walter Scott de-
rived great insight into the heart from his situation in the
Scotch courts, and Fielding from being a police magistrate,
&c.
t Imbibing, most of all, whatever is evil in the other — its
negative, exclusive, envious, harsh, and unfeeling qualities.
— Something of this is apparent in the repulsive painting
attributed to Zurbaran (See the St. Dominick in the Stand-
ish collection in the Louvre) — a man of copper raising his
hand over two women of lejid.
PRIDE AND DESIRE.
53
demeanour and physiognomy. As he speaks, so she
speaks. As he walks, so she walks. Seeing her
pass by only, those who can see would see that she
is he.
But this external conformity is but a slight sign
of the profound inward change effected. That
which has been ti'ansformed is self, the self of
selves. When one human being, unconsciously
dissolving away, has replaced its own substance by
another substance, another humanity, there has
been wrought that great mystery which Dante calls
transhumanation — the superior replacing the infe-
rior, the agent the patient, he has no longer to
direct it even, but becomes its being. He exists ;
the other can only exist as an accident, a quality
of his existence, a pure phenomenon, a vain shadow,
a nothing. . . .
What were we saying just now about influence,
dominion, royalty ? This is above all royalty; it is
divinity; it is being another's god.
If there be one thing in the world more than
another likely to turn a man's brain, it is this. The
feeling of the man who has reached this height,
whatever his show of humility, must be that of the
pagan, " Deus foetus sum." — I was man, I am God !
More than God. He will say to his creature,
"God created thee after such a kind ; I have
changed thee ; so that being no longer his but
mine, thou art /, my inferior /, whose only distinc-
tion from myself is adoring me.
" Dependent being, how couldst thou do other
than yield to my impress ? . . . God yields to my
word, when I bring him down upon the altai*.
Christ humbles himself and comes docilely on a
sign from me, at my own time, to take the place of
the bread, which then no longer exists *."
There is nothing surprising, then, in the mad pride
of the priest, which has often hurried him, on his
throne of Rome, beyond all the mad excesses of
the emperors, and led him to despise, not only men
and things, but his own oath, and the very word
which he wanted to be infallible. Every priest, in
virtue of his powers to make God, can just as easily
make odd even, things done, things undone, things
said, things unsaid. , . . The angels fear such a
power, and respectfully retire before this man to
gaze at him as he passes f.
Boast to me now of your privations and macera-
• " Origen conceives that the priest must he a little God
to do an act which exceeds the power of the angels." Father
Fichet (a Jesuit), Vie de Madame de Chantal, p. 615.— If
you require more authoritative testimony, here is Bourda-
loue, also a Jesuit: — -"Albeit, in this sacrifice, the priest
only acts vicariously for Jesus Christ, it is nevertheless cer-
tain that Jesus Christ submits himself to him, that he becomes
his subject, and renders him daily on our altars the promptest
and most exact obedience. Now, were we not taught these
truths by faith, could we ever imagine that a mortal could
attain so lofty a position, and be invested with a character
which enables him, if I may so speak, to command his sove-
reign Lord, and compel him to descend from heaven ?"
t One of the new priests ordained by St. Franf ois de SalftS,
often saw his good angel. On coming to the church-door,
he stops. Being asked the reason, " he ingenuously replies,
that he was used to see his good angel go before him, but
that now this celestial prince had stopped out of respect to
his character, yielding him the precedence." Maupas de Tour,
Vie de St. Francois de Sales, p. 199. — Molinos boldly says :
— "Had God given men angels for their guides, they might
be deceived by the demons who assume the form of angels
of light. Happily, &c."' Guida, I. ii. c. i.
tions ! They have a great effect upon me ! . . ,
Do you think that through that austere garb, that
meagre body, I do not look into the pale heart
within, and see the deep, exquisite, delirious sense
of pride which constitutes the very being of the
priest ! What he is stealthily carrying under his
robe and hugging with such jealousy, is this treasure
of his, this fearful pride. ... His hands tremble
with it, and it tinges with yellow the fire that
flashes from his downcast eyes. . . .
Oh ! how he hates every opposing obstacle, every
one and thing which hinders his finiteness from be-
coming infinity ! With what boundlessness of hate
he desires its annihilation. ... Oh ! how dia-
bolical it is to hate in God !
Great sufferings are annexed to this grand delight
of being the God of another soul. Every defi-
ciency of which this divinity is conscious, gives rise
to horrible uneasiness. , . . You cannot be sur-
prised at the insatiable ardour with which he will
follow up the absorption of a soul which he hopes
to assimilate, but must easily comprehend the real
and deep-seated cause of that strange avidity which
seeks to see ajl, and to know all, whether great or
little, the principal or the accessary, the essential
or the indifferent, which, far from satisfied with
embracing the exterior, grasps at the substance,
and seeking beyond the substance, would fain
attain the essence. . . . And when this is at-
tained, he will exclaim. On, on, more yet ! . . .
Alas ! the more one acquires the more remains to
be acquired. . . . Who can measure the soul ? In
recesses which are hid both from itself and you,
there remain spaces and depths. ... A world of
liberty beyond your reach, may be buried in that
soul which you fancied you had made wholly yours.
This is humbling, dispiriting, and points to des-
pair. . . Oh ! torture ! A god who has not all, has
nothing.
And then, and then, in the very height of your
pride, an ironical voice will be heard deriding your
pride, the voice of concupiscence, which, up to this
time, it had contrived to silence : " Poor god," she
says, " if thou be not God, 'tis thy fault. I gave
thee warning. Let alone thy school-divinity, thy
distinguo between the two natures, corporeal and
spiritual. To possess, is to have all ; and he alone
can be said to have possession, who can both use
and abuse what he possesses. Thou lackest one
thing to make the soiil tinily thine. . . the body."
CHAPTER VII.
CONCUPISCENCE. — ABSORPTION AND ASSIMILATION CON-
TINtJED. — TERRORS OP THE OTHER WORLD. — THE PHY-
SICIAN AND THE PATIENT. — ALTERNATIVES, POSTPONE-
MENTS.— EFFECTS OF FEAR ON LOVE. — TO HAVE ALL IN
one's POWER, AND TET ABSTAIN. — STRUGGLES BE-
TWEEN THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. — MORAL DEATH
PRECEDES PHYSICAL, AND CASNOT BE RESUSCITATED.
Let us pause a moment at the brink of the abyss of
which we have caught a glimpse, and distinctly
ascertain where we are before we descend.
The power of habit, with all the arts of se-
duction and wheedling to boot, is insufficient to
account for the acquisition of the illimitable do-
minion of which we spoke just now; and, most of
all, to account for its successful acquisition by so
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
many men of mediocre ability. But let us call to
mind what I have said elsewhere — The reason why
this power of death hus such a hold upon the soul is
that, in general, it attacks the soul iclien dyimj, and
crushed by worldly passions ; and that crushing it
still further by the flux and reflux of religious
passions, it is left at last without strength, or uerve,
or any power to resist.
Which of us but in the course of his life has
experienced moments when the heart, bruised by
the very violence of action, we are disgusted with
action, with liberty, with ourselves ? When the
billows which rocked us gently and traitorously,
suddenly and sternly recede and leave us stranded
on the shore . . . we lie there, motionless as a
stone. . . So wrecked, the soul would never more
have been put in motion, had it not been involun-
tarily flooded off' by the waves of Lethe. . , A
low voice whispers, " Stir not, act not, wish not,
become dead to will." . . . "Thanks, thanks; will
for me ; here, take this troublesome liberty which
oppresses me so with its weight; I freely give it
up to you. . . All I now require is a soft pillow of
faith, of childish obedience. . . Ah ! how sweetly
I shall sleep upon it !"
And there is no sleeping, one only dreams.
All nervous, and trembling from weakness, how is
rest possible 1 You are tossed about in dreams,
for all your lying snug in bed. Though the soul
refuse to act, the imagination will be none the less
busy ; and this restlessness is only the more weari-
some from being involuntary. Straightway the
terrors of childhood recur to the patient, and be-
come fixed ideas, not to be forgotten as in child-
hood. The phantasmagoria of the middle age re-
vive with a force we had thought extinct, and the
whole black company of hell, banished by our
scoff's, exact a heavy interest and riot in revenge,
for the poor soul is theirs. . . . What would be
its fate, were not the spiritual physician at the
bed-side to watch and comfort it. — " Do not leave
me ; I am too afraid." — " Do not fi-ighten your-
self ; you will not be held responsible for all this;
God will forgive you these disorderly emotions ;
they are not yours ; it is the devil at work within
you."—" The devil ! ah, I felt him ! I thought
that these strange and sudden transports could
not be mine . . . but how horrible to be the sport
of the evil spirit !" — " I am here, fear nothing ;
lay firm hold of me, and walk straight on. The
gulf, it is true, yawns both on the right and the
left; but, by following the narrow bridge, with
God's help, we shall walk to Paradise along this
razor's edge."
Great power, indeed, to be so necessary, to be
ever summoned and longed for, to hold the two
strings of hope and terror by which the soul ismoved
at will. If troubled, it is calmed ; if calm, it is
troubled. It gradually grows weaker, whilst the
physician waxes stronger. He is conscious of this,
and exults. . . . He, who is forbidden every natural
enjoyment, feels a gloomy joy, a morbid sensuality
in exercising this power, in causing the ebb and
flow of the soul, in harrowing in order to comfort,
in wounding, healing, and, again, wounding. . . .
" Ha ! let her suff'er on ; I am on the rack ; she
shall taste the rack with me. It is something, at
least, to have a companion in suff'ering."
But those sighs ai-e not to be inhaled, that droop-
ing head not to be supported with impunity. . . .
the wounder becomes the wounded. In these effu-
sions of the soul, the simplest female will often un-
consciously utter things which are as fire to the
heart. Under the actual cautery unwittingly
applied by so soft a hand, he winces, is vexed and
irritated, strives to veil the disturbance excited
within him under pious indignation, would fain
hate the sin, and only envies it.
How gloomy an air he wears on occasions such
as these ! See him ascend the pulpit. What is
the matter with this man of God ? It is but too
visible ; zeal of the law eats him up ; he bears all
the sins of the people. . . . What thunders and
lightnings he hurls ! Is it the day of judgment ?
All present shi'ink. . . . The bolt has struck one
alone ; she turns pale, her knees fail her ; the shaft
has sped but too well : he who knows to the very
bottom of her soul has but too easily divined the
terrible, the only word which could go right home
to her heart. ... It has spoken to her only ; she
finds herself alone in the church (the congregation
has disappeared from her eyes), she only sees her-
self falling into the black and Tartarean abyss —
" Father, stretch forth your hand ; I feel that I
smk !"
Notyetawhile, not yet awhile . . . She must strug-
gle, sink, rise to the surface again in order to sink
the lowei\ . . . Daily does she seek him, with tor-
tured heart and urgent entreaty. How she prays,
and presses ! She must still wait for the word
which can alone give her comfort : — " To-day ?" —
" No ; Saturday . . ." And when the Saturday
comes, he puts her off" to the Wednesday*. . . What !
Doom her to spend three days, three whole nights,
in the same anxious state ? On this she will weep
like a child. . . . He heeds it not, he is obdurate
and leaves her, but his obduracy is forced. His
will is secretly flattered at having so humbled this
proud and beauteous madam ; and yet he owns to
himself that he has been hard upon her. He loves
her, and has made her weep.
Barbarian, do you not see that the hapless Wo-
man is sinking, is weakened by each paroxysm ?
What is it you seek ? Her downfal ? But are not
all lapses and falls summed up in this prostration of
strength, this wild despair, this utter forgetfulness
of all self-respect ? — No ; what he has sought is for
her to suff'er like himself, for her pains to resemble
his, for her to be the partner of his frenzy and his
woe. He is solitary ; he would have her solitary.
He is without family ; she shall be without family.
He hates her as wife and mother, and longs for her
as mistress — the mistress of God ; and in making
her such he deceives himself whilst deceiving her.
And yet in the midst of all this, and fascinated
as she is, she is still not as blind as you would
suppose. Women and children are quick-sighted
when they are afraid ; and soon discern any
grounds for recovering their confidence. And
this woman, at the very time she was dragging
herself, at his feet, a timorous and caressiug sup-
pliant, has not failed to notice, through her tears,
the commotions she was exciting in his bosom, . .
They have felt simultaneous emotion, and so have
• This trick of putting off is wonderfully useful in ex-
tracting from women secrets which are out of the province
of confession, and which they have no mind to reveal, as
their husband's secrets, the surname of their lover, &c., &c.
They are always wrought upon at last to tell whatever is
wanted.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
55
been accomplices one of the other. . . Both know
(without any clear knowledge, but through the
mist of instinct and passion) that each has a hold
on the other; she by desire, he by fear.
Fear has much to do with love. In the middle
age the husband was beloved by his wife on
account of his severity. His patient Griselda
recognized his right to the paternal and chastising
rod. William the Conqueror's bride, having re-
ceived a beating from him, knew him by this
sign as her lord and husband. Who has this
right at the present day ? The husband has not
kept it ; the priest has it, and makes use of it ;
he constantly holds the cudgel of authority over
woman, and beats her, submissive and docile as
she is, with spiritual rods. He who has the power
of punishing, has the power of bestowing favours
as well. He who is the only one authorized to
show severity, is also the only one who can confer
what an apprehensive mind considers the highest
boon — clemency. A word of pardon gains him in
one moment a firmer hold of this poor frightened
heart, than years of perseverance would win for
the worthiest lover. The impression made by
mildness is in exact proportion to the harshness
and severity previously exercised. No arts of
seduction can come up to it. What chance have
you with a man who, with Paradise at his dis-
posal, has hell besides to enforce his claims ?
This unexpected return of kindness is a most
dangerous moment for her who, subdued by fear,
and with her brow in the dust, is awaiting the
thunderbolt. . . Is it possible ! Can this dreaded
judge, this angel of judgment, be so soon melted ?
. . . The icy chill of the sword that was creeping
through her veins, is checked by the genial
warmth of a gentle and friendly hand, extended
to raise her from her prostrate posture. . . The
transition is too much for her. She held up
against fear ; but yields at once to this gentleness.
Broken down by so many fluctuations of feeling,
the weak being becomes all weakness
To have all in one's power, and yet to abstain
... a slippery position ! Who can keep his foot-
ing on so treacherous a slope ?
Here we encounter, in the path of concupiscence,
the very point to which we were just now con-
ducted by the path of pride.
Concupiscence, despised at first by pride as
gross and brutal, turns sophist, and opposes it
with that terrible problem, from which desire
shrinks with a sense of fear, and averts its sight,
looking without seeming to look, and covering its
eyes with its hands, yet keeping the fingers spread
— like the Vergognosa in the Campo Santo : —
" Can you be sure that you possess the whole
heart, when you have not the body ? Would not
corporeal enjoyment make you master of recesses
of the soul, which would otherwise remain inac-
cessible ? Can your spiritual dominion be com-
plete, if it does not comprise dominion over the
person ? , . . Mighty popes seem to have re-
solved the question, and have settled that the
popedom implied the empire ; that, over and above
his sovereignty over the mind, the pope was ruler
of temporal kingdoms."
Still, the spirit strives against this sophism of
the flesh, and does not fail to reply : " That the
instant the spiritual conquest is completed, it
ceases to be spiritual ; that this conqueror, this
spirit which seeks to possess the whole, cannot
have the whole without perishing in the hour of
victory."
The flesh, however, is at no loss for an answer
to this, but, taking refuge in hypocrisy, renounces i
herself and turns humble, in order to recover the
advantage : " Is the body such a great matter that
we need disturb ourselves about it ? Being a
simple dependent of the soul, it ought to follow
whithersoever she goes." ... On this point the
mystics are inexhaustible in their revilings of the
flesh and body. " The flesh," cries one, " is the
she-ass, which may be drubbed at pleasure."
" Let her pass," exclaims another, " any muddy
brook ; what matters it to the soul which rides
above, sublime and pure, without deigning to cast
a look below." — On this comes the vile refinement
of the Quietists : " If the inferior part sin not,
the superior waxes proud, which is the greatest
sin of all ; it follows, then, that the flesh must sin
in order that the soul may remain humble; the
sin which imparts humility is a step on which to
mount nearer heaven."
" Sin ? . . . But is there sin ?" (And here de-
praved devotion steps in with the old sophism :)
" 77i€ holy, by its essence, being sanctity itself, alicays
makes holy. In the spiritual man all is spirit,
even what in others is matter. If the saint still
encounter any obstacle in his upward flight to
bring him back to earth; the inferior person, by
delivering him from it, performs a meintorious
work, and is sanctified."
Devilish subtlety, which few frankly avow, but
which numbers cherish and brood over in their
most secret thoughts. Molinos is forgotten, but
not Molinosism *.
• This word gives the idea of some old, forgotten system ;
but it has flourished in practice in all times, being an in-
stinct, a blind belief, natural to the weak, and which may be
expressed in the formula : — " With the strong, every thing
agrees ; with a saint, thers can be no sin." If a patient, for
instance, is happy enough to get his physician to dine with
him, he is at once put at his ease, and indulges in whatever
is before him without fear. — It strikes me that real Molinos-
ism has ever been a powerful agent with the simple. A
contemporary writer, Llorente, relates (vol. iii., c. 28, art. 2.
ed. 1817) that whilst he was secretary to the Inquisition, a
capuchin friar was brought before it who had been the di-
rector of a sisterhood of beguines, and who had seduced al-
most all of them, persuading them that they did not therefore
quit the path of perfection. He told each of them in the con-
fessional that he had received a singular grace from God, who
had deigned to appear to him in the holy wafer, and assure him
that the souls he directed had found such favour in His sight,
particularly the soul of the sister to whom he was then speaking,
■who was so perfect that she had overcome every passion
save desire, that, to reward her virtue He granted her full
dispensation to follow her desires, provided it should be with
him, the director. She was not to communicate the fact of
this singular grace to her confessor. Out of seventeen be-
guines of whom the sisterhood consisted, this bold confessor
gave the dispensation to thirteen. At last, one of them,
falling ill, and believing herself on the point of dying, con-
fessed the whole. Had the guilty friar simply acknowledged
the fact, he would have escaped with a very slight punish-
ment, since the Inquisition, Llorente says, was verj- lenient
towards slips of the kind. But though he did acknowledge
the fact, he would persist in defending his conduct by citing
the dispensation from the sixth commandment granted to
Abraham, in order that he might offer up Isaac, and the dis-
pensation from the eighth, that the Hebrews might spoil
the Egyptians. Besides, he contended that nothing could
66
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
But, in the wretched, dreamy state of existence
led by a soul despoiled of both will and reason,
there is hardly any necessity for concocting such
special pleading. Beside herself, and out of her
senses, having lost all knowledge of reality, ever
plunged in the miraculous, intoxicated with God
and surfeited with the Devil, she is weak unto
death ; but the very excess of this weakness gene-
rates fever, and it spreads — dreadful contagion —
. . . you thought that this moral corpse would crawl
after you, and it is you who are forced to follow
her : she will carry off the living.
Here vanish all those subtleties with which con-
cupiscence had been satisfied. A ghastly light
breaks in, and dispels the clouds in which sophis-
try lay concealed. Too late you discover, that
you have gone further than you intended. You
be more serviceable to religion than the having tranquillised
thirteen virtuous souls, and led them into perfect union with
the Divine essence. Here, says Llorente, I put it to him
whether it were not exceeding strange that all this virtue
should have centred in the thirteen young and handsome
ones, and not in one of the four others who were old and ugly
— to which he coolly replied, that " the Holy Ghost breathes
where it listeth." . . .
In the same chapter, whilst urging that the corruption of
the confessors has been exaggerated by Protestant writers,
he, nevertheless, acknowledges that in the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Inquisition was obliged to rescind an order it had
issued authorising women to denounce guilty confessors,
owing to the multitude of charges brought. — Llorente draws
up an estimate, from a comparison of the charges that ap-
peared on the registers of the Inquisition, of the morality of
the ditferent religious orders, and arrives at the very conclu-
sion common sense would lead us to without any calculation ;
namely, that the wealthier orders having the means of in-
dulgence at their command, seldom run the risk attendant
on trying to corrupt their penitents ; whilst the poorer orders,
and those that were least in contact with the world, proved
on this very account the most dangerous confessors.
have destroyed precisely all that would have aided
you. Each of the motive powers you have sup-
pressed— the will, the mind, the heart, now ex-
tinct, would, had they been suffered to live, have
been for you to use . . . But no ; they are crush-
ed, faded, gone ! The being you have destroyed
has lost all consciousness, can attach herself to
nothing, be attached by nothing. Seeking to clasp,
you suffocated her. What would j'ou not give to
see her in whom life is annihilated once more alive,
what would you not give to be able to resuscitate
her ? . . . Miracles of the kind are not to be
wrought. This form before you is, and ever will
be a cold shadow, without life to respond to you.
Press it in your arms, if you can, and you will feel
no answering throb. . . . This will even fill you
with despair, ^ou may feign every thing and say
everything, save one word which I defy you to
pronounce unmoved — the sacred name of love.
Love ! Why, you have killed it. . . . In order
to love, you must have a living being ; and you
have made what was a being, a thing.
Proud man ! you who every day summon your
Creator to descend upon the altar, you have acted
the exact reverse of the Creator ; you have un-
made an existence.
You who, of a grain of com, can make a god,
tell me, was not that, too, a god which you held
just now in that credulous and docile soul l What
have you done with that inward god of man, which
is called liberty ? You have put yourself in its stead.
In the place of that power, by which man is man,
— I now see nothingness.
Be this nothingness, then, your punishment. It
will be all vain for you to try to fathom it : how-
ever low you descend, you will find only a void —
nothing mtJi will, nothing icitk power. Here, all
that could have loved has perished.
PART THE THIRD.
FAMILIES.
CHAPTER I.
SCHISM IN FAMILIES. — THE DAUGHTER; BY WHOM EDU-
CATED.— IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION, AND ADVANTAGES
op THE FIRST INSTRUCTOR. — INFLUENCE OP PRIESTS
IN BRINGING ABOUT MARRIAGES, AND THEIR SUBSE-
aUENT AUTHORITY.
Thanks be to God that the drama, whose plot I
have attempted to trace, does not always reach the
last act, that is, the annihilation of the will and of
individuality ; although, under the thick cloak of
reserve, discretion, and hypocrisy, in which these
black-gowned gentry wrap themselves up, it is not
easy to detect the exact point where it stops. Be-
sides, whilst the struggle is actually raging, the
clergy are naturally doubly cii'cumspect *.
* And would need to be more so, judging from the noto-
rious adventures of the Abbes C. and N., who, however,
will make their way none the worse on this account, as two
others of equal notoriety, and who now hold dignified situa-
tions, have proved.
You must not seek in tlie church, but in your
own house and family, for the main light thrown
on what the church conceals. Look closely, and
you will perceive them reflect, and, unfortunately,
only too clearly, the things going on elsewhere.
As it was remarked at the commencement of
this volume, on making an evening call, and taking
your seat at the family table, you can liardly fail to
observe that mother and daughter sit almost in-
variably on the same side, and hold the same opi-
nions, whilst the father is on the other, all to him-
self.
What is the meaning of this 1 The meanmg is,
that there is another present at this table, invisi-
ble to you, who contradicts and impugns every word
that falls from the father ; who, poor man, coming
home worn out with the toils of the day, and full of
cares for the future, finds, instead of rest and
balm for his hurt mind, that he has to encounter
the spirit of the past.
Nor is this astonishing ; for, I must repeat it,
IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION.
57
our wives and daughters are brought up by our
enemies, by the enemies of the Revolution and the
march of the modern mind.
You need not turn round upon me, and quote
detached passages from your sermons. What is
your parading the democrat in the pulpit to me if
I have proof, whichever way I turn, whether in
your tracts, which are circulated by thousands and
by millions, or in the ill-concealed doctrines you
teach, or in the secrets which escape from your
confessionals, that you are the enemies of liberty. . .
Subjects of a foreign prince, and denying the rights
of the Gallican church, how come you to speak of
France ?
At this moment there are in France six hun-
dred AND TWENTY THOUSAND * girls being brought
up by nuns under the direction of priests. —
These girls will shortly be wives and mothers ; and
they will hand over to the priests, as far as they are
able, their sons and daughters.
Already, indeed, has the mother succeeded as
far as the daughter is concerned : her persevering
importunity has overcome the father's repugnance.
A man, who only returns home every evening, after
the annoyances of business and struggles with
the world, to find the scene of strife repeated at
home, may hold out for a time, but must give in at
last, or he will be allowed no peace, quiet, rest, or
refuge, and his home will be unbearable. Daily,
hourly, will he be baited by his wife, who, having
nothing but severity to expect from her confessor
so long as she is unsuccessful, will retort upon him
the wars waged on herself — a war of mingled
caresses and reproaches — a war not the less deadly
and implacable, because not overt — a war carried
on by repinings at the fire-side, low spirits, obsti-
nate silence, and declining to eat at meals, and at
bed-time, the invariable repetition of the lesson in-
stilled into her, an inevitable curtain-lecture . . .
'tis like the constant tinkling of a bell in his ears,
and the husband must either give in or go out of
his wits.
And suppose him to be of so firm, persevering
and obstinate a character as to withstand this trial,
his wife perhaps would sink under the constant
effort, and he would be exposed to the hard trial of
seeing her unhappy, pining, restless, and ill. " I
cannot bear to see her falling away so; . . . better
give up the point and save her," argues the hus-
band to himself : so that if he withstands his wife
in the first instance, he is at last beaten by his own
heart ; and, on the very next day, he i-emoves his
son from the academy (if he be still a school-boy)
to the Christian school, or (if in riper years) from
the college to the seminary; whilst the daughter is
borne off by the triumphant mother to that delight-
ful boarding-school, just by, where the worthy
abbe is both confessor and director. — Before the
year is over, it will be discovered that the boarding-
school is to be eschewed as too worldly ; and the
daughter is forthwith transferred to some nunnery
where the abbe is the superior and whei'e she can be
quite safe, under his lock and key.
Make your mind easy, good father, sleep in peace ;
your daughter is in excellent hands, and you will
be sure to have some one to argue with to the day
* M. Louandre, in his conscientiously drawn up article
published in the Revue des Deux Monies, 1840, assumes
the number to be six hundred and twenty-two thousand.
of your death. . . , Slie is a quick-witted girl, and
having been carefully armed at all pomts against
you, will always have a rejoinder at hand to oppose
whatever you m.ay advance.
The singularity of the matter is, that, generally
speaking, the father is perfectly aware that his
child is being brought up as his enemy. — Strange
man ; what can you expect \ — " Oh ! she will
forget what they teach her ; time, marriage, and
the world will soon put these things out of her
head." . . . Yes, for an instant ; but only to be
revived at the very first worldly disappointment
she shall experience. Let a few years pass over
her head, and she will relapse into the feelings of
her childhood. Her present master will resume
his power to thwart you, my worthy gentleman, in
your declining age, and be the daily curse and
blight of yourself and her husband. You will then
taste the fruits of the education you have allowed
her to receive.
Education, it is true, is a trifling matter, and ex-
ercises a most unimportant influence, so that a
parent may safely suffer his enemies to usurp the
bringing up of his child !
What ! to take possession of the mind, with all
the advantage, too, of being the first possessor ! To
be able to inscribe on the virgin page, indelibly to
inscribe whatever they like ; for, remember, it will
be of no use for you to write over it, to cross and
recross it — you may confuse, but cannot erase.
The memory of the young, so easily impressed, is
powerful to retain. This is one of the mysteries of
the mind; these early impressions, which at twenty
seem forgotten, will revive when she is forty or
sixty ; and they are the last and the clearest,
perhaps, which she will carry with her to the tomb.
" But will not literature, will not the press, the
great and all-influential power of modern times, be
to her a second education that will overrule the
first ? " — Do not rely on this. The operation of
the press is partly nullified by itself, for if it has
a thousand voices to address you with, it has also
a thousand voices by which it answers and confutes
itself. Education goes more silently to work, and
does not clamour, but seizes and moulds. Observe,
in that little class, the man who addresses it, un-
contradicted, uncontrolled, and without any one to
act as a check upon him; he is master, absolute
master, and has plenty of power to punish and
chastise. . . . His voice wields a lash more pow-
erful than any hand, and the little, trembling,
trusting being, who has just left her mother's wing,
imbibes irrevocably the serious words which sink
into her waxen mind like nails of brass.
If this be true of schools, how much more so is
it of the impressions produced by preaching ; es-
pecially on girls, who are more docile, timid, and
retentive of early impulses. Never, never will,
the young girl forget the words which first took
her ear in that majestic church under the arched
and resounding roof, the words which that man in
black, on whom she then gazed with awe, seemed
to address to herself. Could she forget them, she
would learn them over again week by week, for
woman's schooling is never over *, and, in the con-
fessional, she again meets with her school-form,
• Particularly through the Catechisms of Perseverance,
the Mois de Marie (Prayers to the Virgin in the Month
of May), &c.; which retain girls long in the priest's hands.
58
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
her school-master, the only man whom she fears,
the only man, as I have already remarked, who,
according to our present habits dare threaten a
woman.
What a preponderating advantage does it not
give him to have her from so tender an age, all to
himself, in the convent in which she has been
placed ; to be the early former of her young mind,
to be the first to exercise authority over her, the
first, like wise,to show her indulgence — so nearly akin
to tenderness *, to be at once the father and the
fi'iend of a child so early snatched from its mother's
arms ! Long will the confidant of her first feelings
he associated with her maidenly reveries. He has
enjoyed a unique and special privilege which her
husband may envy; he has had the virginity of her
soul, the " firstlings" of her will.
It is of this man, ye youths, that you must ask
the daughter in marriage, before breathing your
wishes to her parents. Make no mistake here, or
you will lose your chance. . . . Haughty sons of
the time, I see you shake your heads at this, for
you fancy you will stoop to no man. In such
case, I wish you the enjoyment of a happy celibacy,
with philosophy for your mate ; or else, I can see
you from this spot, for all your boasting, stealthily
creeping along at twilight, slipping into a church,
and down on your knees to the priest. You were
expected, and you are fairly caught. You did not
think it would come to this ; but you are in love,
poor man, and will grant whatever is asked.
I only hope that this girl, purchased at such a
price, may be really yours f- But betsveen the
mother and the priest, the influences which were
momentarily enfeebled will soon resume their
power. You will have a wife minus her heart and
soul, and will find out too late that he who gave
her to you thus, will keep her all to himself J.
CHAPTER II.
THE WIPE. — THE HUSBAND DOES NOT MAKE THE WIFE
HIS COMPANION, AND THE PARTNER OP HIS THOUGHTS.
— THE RESULT TO BE ANTICIPATED FROM MUTUAL
CONFIDENCE. — THE WIFE TURNS FOR COMFORT TO
HER SON ; AND HE IS REMOVED FROM HER. — HER
LONELINESS AND WEARINESS. — A PIOUS YOUNG MAN.
— THE SPIRITUAL AND THE WORLDLY MAN: WHICH
OF THE TWO IS NOW THE MORTIFIED MAN.
Marriage aff'ords the husband one only moment
for making his wife really his own, for, withdrawing
• What is Direction, in general ?— 1st, iove before love;
it cherishes the passions as soon as they dawn in the maiden,
and so effectually that when she leaves the convent, her
friends see the necessity of marrying her lest worse ensue :
2nd, Love after love : in a layman's eyes, an old woman is
an old woman ; in the priest's, she is a woman. When the
world has done, the priest begins.
f See, for the moral weakness of women brought up in
convents, the precarious state of their family peace, and
estrangement from their husbands, Sismondi, Rep. Itali-
ennes, xvi., 222, 227, and, especially, 450.
X We may subjoin to this chapter a fact, which (compared
with what we have said at p. 46, on ecclesiastical discipline)
leads to the inference that the clergy do not lose sight of
the young women who are brought up in the convents under
their direction. A friend of mine, whose testimony comes
additionally recommended by his high position and charac-
ter, lately informed me that having had occasion to place a
young relative of his in a convent, he learnt from the nuns
her from the influence of others, and securing her
to himself for ever. Does he take advantage of it ?
Very seldom.
In the early days of marriage, when he can do
much with her, he ought to make her his confidant,
the depository of his hopes, the sharer of his projects,
ought to interest her in his occupations, and cre-
ate a call upon her activity by associating her in his
own active pursuits.
To will, to think, act, and sufi'er with him and
for him — such is marriage. Now the worst that
can happen, is not her suffering, but her pining in
loneliness and weai'iness, apart, and as if widowed;
So deserted, how can one be surprised at her affec-
tions being weaned from him ? . . . Ah ! had he
studied from the moment they were united to
make her his own, by making her the sharer of his
aspirations, his hopes, his doubts and fears, had
anxiety arising from the same thoughts kept them
both watchers through the sleepless night, he
would have retained her heart. Grief itself forms
a bond of attachment; and mutual sufi'ering begets
mutual love.
The Frenchwoman, beyond the Englishwoman
or the German, or the woman of any other coun-
try, is framed to assist her husband and to be-
come, not his companion only, but his fellow-work-
man, friend, partner, his oiAer se^/"; but few, except
among our trading classes, think of turning this
charming adaptability to account. In the business
parts of Paris, in the gloomy warehouses of the
Rue des Lombards or the Rue de la Verrerie, you
may see the young wife, who frequently brings the
husband a considerable portion, shut herself up
nevertheless in the little counting house with its
glass door, keeping the books, entering all goods
sent out or received, and overlooking the clerks
and porters. The concern is sure to prosper, with
such a partner ; and the home will be all the
happier. The husband and wife, separated by
their various occupations during the day, must be
so much the better inclined to enjoy a community
of thought in the evening.
In other classes of society, although the wife can-
not take so direct a share in her husband's occupa-
tions, he may at all events interest her in his pros-
pects and ideas. I have not concealed that thisieren-
dered difficult by the engrossing nature of the profes-
sional and scientific pursuits of the day, which are
becoming more and more ramified into minute subdi-
visions, requiring close and unremitting applica-
tion; whilst woman, less persevering, and not called
upon to such an extent to devote herself to exact-
ness of detail, is limited to generalities. If a
husband sincerely desires to identify his wife with
his pursuits, and train her mind to comprehend
them, this initiation is in his power on one condition
— she must love him : still, it will require the
greatest patience and gentleness on his part. When
first united, they come together as if from the two
opposite poles ; their minds formed on a totally
opposite principle. This being the case, how can
that they forwarded to Rome the names of the pupils who
distinguished themselves the most. Numerous matches
must be brought about by this centralization of information
concerning the daughters of the leading families of the
catholic world, and the plan must be singularly serviceable
to the schemes of Ultramontane policy. In this case, the
Jesu (Society of Jesus) must be a vast matrimonial agency
office.
NECESSITY FOR CONFIDENCE ON THE HUSBAND'S PART.
59
you expect your young wife, however intelligent,
to understand you at the first word ? Whenever,
indeed, she fails to comprehend you, the fault is
generally your own ; and arises from your use of
the dry, abstract, scholastic mode of reasoning to
which your education has accustomed you. Having
common sense and her feelings for her sole guides,
she is at a loss to follow your pedantic train of argu-
ment, and it is seldom, indeed, that you can ac-
commodate yourself to the level of plain, every- day
illustration and language. To do this, requires
ability, good-will, and great love . . . and allow
me to tell you. Sir, it requires greater intelligence
and more heart than you are in the habit of dis-
playing.
The first word, the sense of which she does not
distinctly catch, the husband loses patience. . .
" She is stupid, or giddy." He gives up the
attempt, and all is over . . . severe is the loss he
sustains by this impatience. Had he but perse-
vered, and gradually enticed her to warm in the
subject, his life would have been her life, and both
would have known the real sweets of mamage. . .
Ah 1 what a lightener of his toils has he not
thrown away; what a safe confidant; what a zeal-
ous ally I ... To this being, who, left to her own
resources, seems to him frivolous and trifling, he
would, in difficult conjunctux'es, have been often in-
debted for a ray of inspiration and sagacious counsel.
I now approach a most important subject, on
which, however anxious to enlarge, I can only
offer a word or two.
Modern man, the victim of the division of
labour, and often condemned to some limited
branch of business in which he loses more en-
larged views, and becomes a mere mummy, needs
by his side a fresh, uncontaminated mind, more
nicely balanced than his own, and less narrowed
by the minutiae of business, to entice him out of
the shop, as it were, and raise him to nobler and
more universal feelings. In these times of hard
competition, after toiling all day long, and return-
ing home of an evening less exhausted by actual
labour than by disappointments, man needs to
find a wife there to soothe the agitation of his
fevered brain. AVorkman as he is (what else are
we, when labour is so minutely divided in profes-
sions as well as crafts ?) thirsty, whatever his
calling, as a blacksmith fi'om his forge, thii-sty and
fevered in mind, a wife would open to him the
living springs of the beautiful and the good, of
God and of nature, and he would for a moment
quaif of the waters of everlasting life. This would
be his hour of salutary oblivion when he would
breathe freely, and recover heart. . . So, rein-
vigorated by her, he would, in his turn, bear her
up with his powerful hand into his own world,
inspiring her with his new ideas and enlai'ged
views, and pointing out to her the glorious hopes
of the future *.
* Do not suppose that it is possible to remain stationary;
we must either advance or retrograde. If life must be one
continuous progress, the object is infinitely better attained
by the natural results of marriage than by the artificial aids
of conventual life. When woman ends in the wife, she
begins in the mother and grandmother. She has always
new incentives to begin again and improve her own moral
culture. Woman ever seeks to rise higher (and hence she
attaches herself to man); whilst nature gives her, not the
guidance of a single man only, but a successive association
This, unhappily, is never realized. Nowhere
have I met with that uni'cserved confidence and
happy intercommunion of mind, which would be
the beatitude of marriage. A momentary attempt
is made at the beginning to come to a mutual un-
derstanding, but to be as soon discouraged. The
husband, his feelings frozen up by the cold blasts
of interest and of business, forgets to talk ; and
what he does say never springs from the heart.
At first, she is surprised, then uneasy; until at last
she asks the reason ; but questioning puts him out
of the way, and she is forced to desist. He may
make himself easy ; the time will come when his
wife, as lost in thought, and absent in mind at thoir
fire-side as himself, and her mind occupied with
dreams of her own, will leave him to the full enjoy-
ment of his taciturnity.
First of all, she has a son ; and if he is not re-
moved from home, her whole life will be wrapped
up in his. Does she walk out ? He hangs by her
hand ; and soon she will take his arm. He is like
a young brother to her, " a little husband." . . .
How he grows ! How time flies ! . . . And 'tis a
pity that he grows so ; for now comes the time of
separation, of Latin, and of tears. . . Must he not
be a scholar ? must he not be launched as soon as
possible into the violent career of rivalry, and early
acquire the bad passions so carefully cultivated in
us — pride, ambition, hatred, envy? . . . Fain would
the mother plead for delay. . . . What occasion
for hurry ? He is so young, and schools so severe !
He will learn better at home, if he is only spared
her ; she will have masters for him and super-
intend his education herself. She will give up balls
and parties. ..." Out of the question, madam,
out of the question : you would make a milksop of
him !". . . The truth is that the father, although he
loves his boy, finds the noise and bustle he keeps up
in the house, otherwise so well-ordered and regular,
unbearable. He finds that he can no longer put
up with any thing of the sort. Jaded, tired, and
in a bad humour, all he asks for is peace and quiet.
Wise husband, who treat a mother's opposition
so lightly, does it never occur to you that it may be
the instinct of virtue which inspires this woman
with the longing to keep her son at home — as a pure
and irreproachable witness whose presence would
always preserve her from eiTor ? You yourselves
would anticipate her wish, did you but know how
salutary that presence is. He brings a blessing on
the house ; and, as long as he is in it, it will be
difficult to loosen the family tie. What constitutes
the bond of married life ? The hope of a child.
What cements it ? The birth of a child. He is its
beginning, end, and middle — the mediator, I might
say its all.
It cannot be too often repeated, for nothing is
more true, that woman leads a solitai-y life, M'ar-
ried, she is alone ; a mother, she is alone. Once
her son enters college, she only sees him at long
intervals, and then as a favour ; and when he
quits it, it is only for other prisons and other
exiles.
Enter those brilliantly lighted rooms ; it is a
fashionable evening party, and you see the women
seated in long rows, full-dressed, and all alone.
of better generations, as so many steps on which to mount,
and by each of which the mother is reproduced, renewed,
and improved.
60
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
Go to the Champs-Elys^es, about foui* o'clock, and
you will see the same women, each in her solitai-y
carriage, proceeding for their cheerless, compan-
ionless ride in the Bois de Boulogne. . . These
are in their own carriages ; others are confined to
a shop — but they are equally alone.
One word explains the whole life of women who
are so unfortunate as to have little to do — loneliness
and weariness or ennui. Ennui, which is commonly
supposed to be the characteristic of a feeble and
inert disposition, is to a nervous female a positive
and insupportable malady, which eats into her
very existence *. . . . Whoever gives her but a
momentary relief, she regards as her saviour.
Ennui induces them to put up with the visits
of friends whom they pronounce to be inquisitive,
envious, slanderous, and spiteful. Ennui leads
them to endure novels published in newspapers in
that piecemeal form, which cuts short the thread of
the story at the most interesting moment f . Ennui
takes them to those concerts of miscellaneous
music, in which the ear is fatigued by the differ-
ences of style. Ennui drags them to hear sermons
which thousands listen to, and none would or could
read. Down even to the half-worldly, half de-
vout, and mawkish productions with which the
faubourg St. Germain is inundated by the neo-
catholics, there is not one but finds some reader or
other among these poor souls, devoured with ennui.
These delicate, sickly beings digest a nauseous
mixture of musk and incense, which would turn the
stomach of a healthy person.
One of these young authors explains in a novel of
his the advantages to be derived from making
gallant devotion a stepping-stone to gallantry.
There is no novelty in the process. I only wish
that they who have borrowed it from the Tartufie
had infused some of Moliere's wit into it 1
Not that they have any great need of it ; for the
women listen to their insinuated declarations, their
hinted love, as a matter of conscience, and a means
of working their salvation. A woman who would be
off'ended at the first word of endearment from the
most sober friend, endures with patience the double
entendres of the young Levite ; and, though intel-
ligent, experienced, a woman alike of the world
and of reading and observation, she obstinately
shuts her eyes here. And if he be without talent,
dull, and uninteresting, yet his intentions are so
good ! Father Such-a-one answers for him ; he is
a most worthy young man. . . .
The truth is, that his worth consists in in-
• Even love is a much less powerful remedy than is sup-
posed; and our fine novels of the day have had a very dif-
ferent effect from what is attributed to them, for they have
served to cut down the passions. Contrasted with the vivid
painting of these works, real passion, whatever may be said
to the contrary, is often thrown into the background.
Women soon learn to think their own adventures poor and
insipid compared with the burning romance of Indiana and
Valentine ; and when once the eyes of a woman of sense are
flooded by this noon-tide blaze, her own loves turn dim and
go out.
t I allude solely to the fragmentary form, but by no means
would be understood to decry the admirable talent displayed
by some writers in this style.
sinuating love whilst talking devotion ; and, al-
though he sets about it in a poor and weak man-
ner, the attempt itself is a recommendation in the
eyes of a woman of a certain age. However dis-
tinguished the husband may be, he has still the
fault of being a matter of fact person, wholly taken
up with his worldly interests ; and so he is, for
he is busied providing for his family, securing the
future welfare of his children, and exhausting
himself in efforts to support the ruinous luxury
in which his lady lives.
Probably the husband would urge that, however
worldly the result of his incessant occupations
may be, they possess a moral interest for him,
that they interest his heart ; and he might add,
that whilst busied with worldly interests for the
benefit of others, whether in the senate or at
the bar, or in a thousand other ways, a man may
display more disinterestedness, and, consequently,
more spirituality, than all the brokers of this
latter commodity who turn the Church into a
Stock-Exchange.
A distinction must be made here, which is not
sufficiently attended to.
The spiritual man in the middle age, the morti-
fied man, was the priest. He mortified the flesh
by his severe studies — and the priest was the only
student in those days — by his nocturnal vigils and
prayers, by his severe fasts and monastic flagel-
lations. Little of all this now remains, for the
Church has softened down every thing. Priests
lead the same life as other men ; and if the means
of the majority be limited, they are at least
secure. A proof of this is the time they are ever
willing to spare to beguile women's leisure hours
with endless conversations.
Who is the mortified man of the present day, in
this age of severe toil, spirited efforts, and ex-
hausting competition ? The layman, the worldly
man. Day and night does this worldly man
labour, on the rack of care, for his family or for
the good of the state. Engaged in the details
of some all-engrossing profession, or immersed in
studies of too profound a nature for his wife
and children to take any interest in them, he
cannot share with them the thoughts that fill his
mind. Even at meal-times he speaks little, but
follows up the train of his ideas. He succeeds in
business, or ranks as a discoverer in science, at
a dear rate, at the price, as Newton says, of un-
ceasing thought. . . Alone in the midst of his family,
he who makes its fortune, or forms its pride and
boast, runs the risk of being as a stranger to his
own flesh and blood.
The churchman, on the contrary, who, to judge
by his publications, is little given to study nowa-
days, who can lay no claim to the title of discoverer
or inventor, and who, besides, has done with the
fleshly mortifications of the middle age, finds him-
self at liberty to follow both his occupations, fresh
and unabated. By unceasing assiduity and honeyed
words he can worm himself into the confidence of
the family of the man engrossed by his business
or by his studies, and still from his pulpit over-
whelm the worldling with the thunders of his
eloquence.
THE MOTHER'S LOVE.
CI
CHAPTER III.
THE MOTHER. SHE ALONE IS THE PROPER INSTRUCTRESS OF
THE CHILD FOR YEARS. — INTELLECTDAL NOURISHMENT;
GESTATION, INCUBATION, EDUCATION. — THE CHILD
SHIELDS THE MOTHER, THE MOTHER THE CHILD — SHE
PROTECTS ITS NATIVE ORIGINALITY, AN ORIGINALITY
TO BE MODIFIED BY PUBLIC EDUCATION, AND WHICH IS
MODIFIED EVEN BY THE FATHER WHILST THE MOTHER
WOULD PRESERVE IT. — MATERNAL WEAKNESS: STILL
THE MOTHER WISHES TO MAKE THE SON A HERO. —
HEROIC DISINTERESTEDNESS OF THE MOTHER'S LOVE.
As we have already said, — If you want to fortify
your home against the foreign influence which is
shivering your houseliold gods to atoms, keep your
child in it as long as possible. Let the mother bring
him up under the eye of the father, luitil the mo-
ment that his great mother, his country, summon
him to the education of the public school*.
One consequence of the child's being left to the
mother to bring up, is that she will be kept at home
with her husband, whose counsels she will stand in
need of, and to whom she will constantly look for
fresh advice ; and thus the perfection of family
life, the formation of the child by the mother, and
of the mother by the husband, will be realized.
A mother's instinct is almost unerring, and
should be respected. Her dearest wish is to keep
her child by her. Severed from him by the knife
at the moment of his birth, she is ever striving to
rejoin that portion of herself which a cruel violence
tore from her ; but whose roots remain in her
heart . . . When removed from her to be brought
up at a distance, that is a second severance. . . .
Child and mother weep, but the tears of both are
equally disregarded. . . . Wrongfully so. Those
tears of his, which are supposed to spring from
his tender age alone, attest a serious truth, which
merits our best attention — they prove that he still
needs his mother'' s care.
He is not yet completely weaned ; for the child
ought to receive his intellectual food at the begin-
ning, as he does his bodily, under the form of milk
— that is, it should be fluid, warm, sweet, and
pregnant with life f . It can be administered in this
form by the mother alone. Men would give at once
bread to this suckHng, still racked with the pains
of teething, and punish him if he do not readily
devour it. In God's name give him milk still, and
he will not tire of quaffing it J.
After times will be astonished to learn that men
ever undertook to bear about and feed these
uursHngs ! Let them alone; leave them to women §.
• And even then, it would be highly advantageous for the
mother to see him every evening ; for she would detect at a
glance every change for better or worse, and, In fact, nume-
rous particulars, which not even his father, let alone his
master, would observe till long after.
t Pregnant with life,— that is, excluding all systems
which make learning a plaything, all arts of memory, &c.
t The painter of sibyls and prophets, Michael Angelo,
himself a prophet, has taught us, in his way, how initiation,
induction into life, — in a word, how education is essentially
the woman's province, by introducing beneath the feet of
these terrible virgins, who thunder forth the word of God,
the initiation of children and mothers under the most artless
forms. (See his paintings in the Sistine Chapel.)
§ A writer of enlarged views has said that schools for
girls ought to be established before boys' schools ; since every
girl who shall become wife and mother, will herself be a
school.
A pretty sight to see a child nursed by a man.
Take care how you dandle the fragile being in your
rugged arms, or you will break it with your awk-
wardness !
The misunderstanding between master and child
arises as follows: Man imparts knowledge after
a manly fashion, by fixed rules, strict cla.ssifications,
all angular, and sharp as crystals. Now these
prismatic bodies, regular and luminous as they
may be, hurt with their angles and sharp points
the tender and still fluid being, who will not for a
longtime be able to assimilate to himself any thin"'
devoid of the fluidity of his own existence. The
master grows angry and impatient at his dulncss,
and is at a loss how to proceed with him.
No ; there is but one person in the world with
the perception of the delicacy of management re-
quired for the child — she who has borne him in
her bosom, and of whom, notwithstanding the vio-
lence with which he was severed from her, he will
ever form a part. Gestation, uicubation, education
have long been synonymous terms.
Much longer, indeed, than one would suppose.
The influence of the mother on the child whose
mental growth is begun, is even greater and more
decisive than that which she exercised over him
when in her arms. I will not affirm that it is in-
dispensable for the mother to suckle him at her
own breast ; but I will say that it is for her to feed
him from her own heart. The chivalrous ages
clearly perceived that love was the most powerful
agent in education ; and it alone did more for the
advancement of the human mind than all the wrang-
lijigs of schoolmen to retard it.
We have our schoolmen, too ; filled with the
spirit of empty abstraction and verbal disputes ;
and we shall be able to counteract their influence
only by prolonging the influence of the mother,
by making her our associate in the work of educa-
tion, and securing the child a teacher whom he can
love. Love is said to be a mighty teacher ; and
this is most especially true of the fondest, deepest,
purest love of all.
Blind and rash that we are, we remove the
child from the mother at the very moment he was
most essential to her ! We deprive her of the dear
occupation for which God called her into being,
and are afterwards surprised to find that thus
cruelly separated from her child, and condemned
to indolence and inactivity, she abandons herself to
vain reveries, again yields her neck to the yoke
which she formerly loved, and too often, fondly
imagining that she is not forgetting her duty, lis-
tens to the Tempter who addresses her in the'name
of God.
Be prudent and wise, and leave her her son !
Love is a necessity of life to woman ; so leave her
the lover given her by nature, and whom she
would prefer to all other lovers. Whilst you are im-
mersed in your business (or, it may be, engrossed by
your passions,) leave her the tall and delicate strip-
ling to hang on her arm, and she will be proud and
happy. . . . You fear his becommg effeminate, if
tied to his mother's apron-string ; but on the con-
trary, she will become manly for his sake if you
leave him to her. Only make the trial, and you will
be astonished at the suddenness of the change.
She will turn alike pedestrian and horseman, to
accustom him to manly habits. Entering heartily
into all the youth's exercises, she makes herself
62
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
of his age, and is regenerated in this Vita Nuota ;
so that when you return and see your Rosalind *,
you will fancy you have two sons.
There is one general rule, at least, to which I have
hardly found an exception ; and this is that supe-
rior men are all their mother's sons ; they are stamped
in her image both morally and physically.
I may surprise you by saying so, but it is the
truth ; without her fostenng care, he never will be
a man. It is only the mother who has the patience
necessary for developing the mental growth of the
tender plant, by securing its liberty. The ex-
treniest care should be taken not to place the child,
whilst still tender and pliable, in strangers' hands.
Even the best-intentioned, by forcing him to bear
burthens beyond his strength, run the risk of making
him so bow-backed that he can never stand straight.
The world is full of men who, through the over
rigid discipline of their early years, remain in
bondage all their lives. Too strict and precocious
an education has broken the elasticity of their
minds, and destroyed that originality {genius, in-
gegno, or whatever tenn you may give it) which is
the bloom of man.
Who nowadays respects that original ingenu-
ousness and frankness of character — that sacred
genius which we bring into the world with us ?
Nay, this is generally considered the offensive and
blamable side of the child's manners, the side
which renders him unlike every body else . . . Hardly
does his young nature expand and flourish in its
liberty, than there is a general surprise and
shaking of heads : — " What's all this ? we never
saw the like. — Be quick ; shut him up, stifle this
living flower. Here are iron frames . . . Ha !
you were for opening your petals, and flaunting
your luxuriant beauty in the sun. Be wiser, flower,
be wiser ; fold thy leaves, and shrivel up." . . .
And now, what, I pri'thee, is this poor little
thing against which all are leagued, but that indi-
vidual, special, original element, by which this
being was about to be distinguished from all other
beings, was about to add a new type to the infinite
variety of human characters, perhaps a genius to
the list of creative geniuses ? The uninventive
mind is usually the plant which, too securely fas-
tened to its proj), has gradually assimilated to the
nature of its withered companion. Look at its
regularity, its decent growth ; here are no irregu-
lar suckers, which require pruning. But, after
all, it is but a tree without sap, and will never bear
a leaf.
Do I mean, then, to assert that the plant needs
no prop, and may be left to itself ? There can be
nothing further from ray thoughts. On the con-
trary, I firmly believe the two educations to be
necessary — both the domestic and the public one.
Let us inquire into their respective influences.
What are the end and aim of our public educa-
tion, indisputably superior, as at present conducted,
to what it ever was befoi-e ? Simply, to identify
the child with his country, and with the country
of countries, the world. This is the object it pro-
poses to itself, and which at once renders it legiti-
mate and necessary: above all, it aims at imparting
a fund of sentiments common to all ; at making the
child tractable, and restricting him from jarring
with all around ; at preventing him from breaking
out discordantly in the great concert in which he is
• SUakspeare's " As You Like it."
destined to bear his share ; and at regulating the
exuberance of his sprightlier sallies.
So much for public education ; whereas, liberty
is the essence of domestic education : though, even
here, the impulses of his childish nature are doomed
to meet with checks and limits. They are con-
trolled by the father ; who, full of anxiety about
the future, thinks it his duty to tame betimes the
unbroken colt to pace the furrow in which he must
eventually drag the plough. Too often, indeed, the
father falls into the error of consulting what is
apparently suitable, and of fixing on some profitable
cai'eer, all marked out to hand, instead of studying
the natural bent of his young and vigorous foal.
How many a thorough-bred horse has been con-
demned, by some fatal error of the kind, to the
endless circle of the riding-school !
Poor liberty ! Who, now, will have eyes to see
thee, a heart to shelter thee ? Who, now, will have
the patience and boundless indulgence required to
tolerate thy early outbreaks, and to encourage even
pranks which soon tire the stranger and indifferent
person, and even the father ? . . . God alone, who has
created this being, and who, having created him,
Imows him well enough to discriminate and love
the good in him, even in that which is bad. . . .
God, I say, and, with God, the mother : in this, the
two are identical.
When we consider that the avei'age of life is so
brief, and that so many die young, we are naturally
disinclined to shorten this first and happiest period
of life in which the child, suffered by the mother
to enjoy its freedom, lives under grace and not un-
der the law. But this disinclination would turn
into horror did all agree with me, that this very
period which is looked upon as lost, is precisely
the sole, the precious, the irretrievable period, when
amidst childish sports sacred genius tries its first
flight, the season the new-fledged eagle first plumes
its wing. ... Oh ! for mercy's sake, shorten nof
this brief span ! Banish not, before his time, this
new-born man from the maternal paradise. Give
him one day more ; let him go to-morrow, if you
like ; it will be time enough : to-morrow, he shall
bend to his work and crawl along the furrow . . .
leave him but this one day, to gain full strength
and life and inhale in copious draughts the vital air
of liberty.
The danger as regards the education of children
is the requiring too much from them, and the being
over zealous and anxious about their progress. The
soul is disregarded for external accomplishments
and ceaseless acquisitions in letters and science.
This is a perfect Latinist, that an accomplished
mathematician ; but where, I ask, is the man * ?
Now it was precisely the man which the mother
loved and guarded with jealous care, and that she
respected in the wayward sallies of the child. She
would appear to withdraw from all interference,
even from superintendence, in order to leave him,
unfettered in action, to grow up free and strong ;
but, at the same time, she was ever near him, shield-
him as it were in an invisible embrace.
I am aware that this education of Jove has its
* If there be reason to fear that the moral man is lost
sight of in schools too exclusively scientific and purely scho-
lastic, what are we to think of those in which morality is
directly attacked by training the child to habits of insincerity
and want of good faith, by setting him to act the spy on his
companions ? See a note further on.
TRUE AND FALSE LOVE.
63
danger. Love seeks self-immolation above all
things — to sacrifice every thing, interest, conveni-
ences, habits, life itself, if required. Now, the
object of this self-abnegation, in his childish selfish-
ness, may look upon all sacrifices as only his due,
and, allowing himself to be treated as an inert,
motionless idol, will become the more unfit to act
for himself the more there is done for him.
This is a real danger ; but it is counterbalanced
by the ardent ambition of the mother's lieart,
which almost always looks forward to her child's
future career with unbounded hopes, and burns
to realise them. Every mother, worthy of the
name, firmly believes that her son is destined to be
a hero — no matter whether in the battle-field, the
arena of public life, or the peaceful contests of
science. The visions which have faded one by one
before her bitter experience of the world, are to be
realities for this dear child of hers. The thoughts
of his splendid career indemnify her already for
the wretched present. Penury is theirs to-day ;
let him ripen into man, and they inhabit a palace.
. . . Oh, poetry ! Oh, hope ! Where shall we
set bounds to a mother's aspirations ?..."! am
only a woman, here is a man. ... I have given a
man to the world, . . " One only doubt perplexes
her ; shall her boy be a Bonaparte, a Voltaire, or
a Newton ?
If to fulfil this destiny he must quit her, she will
consent — he may go to a distance. Jf she must
pluck her heart out of her bosom, pluck it out she
will. . . Love is capable of every sacrifice, even of
sacrificing itself. . . Yes ; let him depart ; let him
follow his high destiny, and realize the golden
dreams she cherished when she bore him in her
bosom, or nursed him on her knees. . . And then,
a miracle ! this timid woman who just now could
hardly suffer liim to walk alone for fear of his fall-
ing, has become so firm of heart that she dismisses
him to the most dangerous careers — sending him
to sea, or allowing him to depart to the rude battle-
field of Algiers. . . She trembles, she sinks be-
neath her anxiety, and yet persists. . . What sup-
ports her ? Her faith. Her son cannot perish,
for he is destined to be a hero !
He returns. . . How he is altered ! What !
can that proud soldier be my son 1 He left a youtli ;
he is come back a man, and in haste to get married.
Here is another sacrifice for the mother, and not
the least she is called upon to make. He will love
another. His mother, in whose afiections he will
ever hold the first place, must content herself with
the second place in his ; and, alas ! a very small
place in the hour of passion. . . So she looks out,
and chooses a rival, and, for his sake, loves her,
and decks her out, and becomes one in her train,
and leads them to the altar, and all that she asks
for there is, not to be forgotten.
CHAPTER IV.
OS LOVE. — LOVE WOULD elevate, not absorb. — the
FALSE THEORY OP OUR OPPONENTS, AND THEIR DAN-
GEROUS PRACTICE. — LOVE WOULD CREATE AN EaUAL,
TO BE LOVED FREELY. — MATERIAL LOVE. — SOCIAL
LOVE.— FAMILY LOVE; LITTLE KNOWN IN THE MID-
DLE AGE. — THE HOUSEHOLD GODS.
May I not have been led away, in the preceding
chapter, by the charms of the subject, so as to lose
sight of the question which it is the object of the
present work to discuss ?
On the contrary, I assume that by so doing I
have thrown considerable light upon it. The con-
sideration of the mother's love (that miracle of
God), and of the education given by the mother,
assists us to a right understanding of tho system on
which all education, all direction, all initiation,
ought to be conducted.
The singular advantage possessed by the mother
in educating the child is, that being devoted and
disinterested beyond all others, she allows proper
scope to the dawning originality of the tender
being who is beginning to assume an individual
character, and protects it from undue interference.
She would have him, at whatever cost to her own
feelings, act according to the free bent of his genius,
would have him grow up and rise.
What is the object of education, and of direction
worthy of the name ? The same as that of love in
its most exalted and disinterested form — that this
young being may rise. Take this word in both its
senses. True education seeks to raise him to the
level of his instructor, and, if possible, above him.
Far from deriving subserviency, the strong man
desires to strengthen and bring this weak one to an
equality with himself ; and he endeavours to efiect
this by developing, not only the similarities, but the
dissimilai'itles of their character; by giving scope to
the display of his natural genius, by favouring the
free personal agency of this being born to act, by
appealing directly to the individual, and to that
which constitutes his individuality, his will. . .
The most cherished wish of love is to exalt the
will and moral powers of the loved one to the sub-
limest pitch, to heroism.
The beau-ideal of the mother, and it is that of
all proper education, is to make a hero, a man
powerful in act and fruitful in deed, a man who can
will, do, and create.
Let us compare this with the aim of ecclesiasti-
cal education and direction.
This is to make a saint, and not a hero ; for the
clergy believe the two to be radically different,
being led astray by their standard of holiness,
which they consider to consist, not in harmoniously
working out God's designs, but in being lost in
him.
The whole of their theology, as soon as we push
them a little and drive them to strict reasoning,
slips irretrievably down this gulph, into which it
sunk, as it was natural it should, in the seventeenth
century. The great spiritual directors of that day,
who, from being the last in the field, were enabled
to analyze the system, have detected and proved
its base to be annihilation — the art of eradicating
all free agency, will, and individuality. . . " Anni-
hilate— we grant you this ; but then, by annihi-
lating to absorb in God." . . Does God desire this ?
Free agent and creator himself, He must desire us
to resemble Him, and to be free agents and crea-
tors likewise. — You know not God the Father !
Reduced to practice, the falsity of the theory is
apparent. By closely tracking it, we have seen
that its results contradict its anticipations. It holds
forth the promise of absorbing man in God, and
reconciles him to this extinction of self by assuring
him that he will be a sharer in the infinitude that
absorbs him ; whereas, in reality, it only absorbs
him in his fellow man, in infinitude of littleness.
64
PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.
The directed being annihilated in the director, of
two persons there remains but one. The otlier
has perished as a person, and has become a thing.
From my study of devout direction, as exempli-
fied in the first part of this work in the revelations
of directors, the integrity of whose character is
above suspicion, and in those of women of undoubted
piety, I have been led to the two following con-
clusions:—
1st, A saint who has been long habituated to
convei'se with a pious woman of the love of God, is
sure to make her in love with himself.
2nd, For this love to remain pure depends on
the chance of the director being himself pure ; for,
as the female whom he directs gradually loses all her
own will, she must at last be utterly at his mercy.
The corollary is, Will he who has her in his power
refrain from using it ; and can we expect this
miraculous forbearance to be realized in all
cases 3
Priests have always secretly prided themselves
on being great masters in matters of love. Ti'ained
to self-command, and accustomed to under-hand
dealings and roundabout manoeuvres, they fancy
themselves alone in the secret of managing the
passions. They creep on under the shelter of am-
biguous " givings out;" and creep on safely, for they
are patient and will wait until habit strengthens
into familiarity. They laugh in their sleeves at
our impassioned vivacity, imprudent franknesses,
and ungovernable transports which carry us wide
of the mark.
If love be the art of taking the soul by surprise,
of subduing it by the force of authority and insinu-
ation, of crushing it by fear in order to seize upon
it by indulgence, until at last falling asleep through
sheer exhaustion it suffers itself to be enmeshed in
an invisible net — if love be all this, then, indispu-
tably, the priest would be the mighty master of the
art.
Fine masters, forsooth ! Come and learn from
the ignorant and undesigning, that, for all your little
arts, you have never known what all sacred love
means. . . . Ah ! it requires, as a primary and
indispensable condition, a sound heart and straight-
forward mode of proceeding ; and, in the second
place, that generousness of spirit which covets not
the bondage but the enfranchisement of the loved
object ; which desires to strengthen it and love it
in its freedom — leaving it free to love or not as it
pleases.
Come, ye saints, and hearken to what two world-
lings, two players, Moliere and Shakspeare, tell us
of love. They know more about it than you. —
The lover is asked for a description of his mistress,
her name, appearance, and stature . . . His answer
is : — " Just as high as my heart *."
A noble standard, which is both that of love and
of all education and initiation — an earnest endea-
vour and desire to elevate the loved object to per-
fect equality with one's self, to make her "just as
high as one's heart *."
Shakspeare has laid down the standard ; Mo-
liere has exemplified it. The latter was endowed hi
the highest degree with the "genius of education-}-,"
the genius which seeks to elevate and enfranchise,
which loves equality, liberty, and intelligence.
* Shakspeare's " As You Like it."
t A most ingenious and just remark of M. E. Noel's.
He has stigmatized as a crime * that unworthy
love which takes and keeps the soul its prisoner by
fostering its ignorance ; and, exemplifying his
doctrines by his life, he set the noble example of
that generous love which longs to make the loved
object its equal, the same as itself; which fortifies
and arms it even against itself, . . . This is love
and faith.
It is the faith that, sooner or later, the emanci-
pated being must be the prize of the most worthy ;
and is not he the most worthy who longs for afi'ec-
tion freely given ?
Nevertheless, let us weigh well the full import of
this serious word — his equal, and the dangers it
brings in its train. . . . 'Tis as if this creator said
to the creature whom he has made and emanci-
pated : — " Thou art free, and no longer shackled
by the power which has reared thee. Thou canst
act independently of me, transfer thy thoughts else-
where, and, if thy heart and recollections do not
bind thee to me. . . canst turn against me if thou
wilt ! "
Here we see the sublimity of love, and the reason
that God is so indulgent to its many weaknesses.
In the unmeasured disinterestedness of its desire
to form a free agent and to enjoy its free love, it
creates its own danger. . . . The words, " act in-
dependently of me," may imply " love independently
of me," and involve a chance of separation. Love
places the sword in the once feeble hand, grown
strong and bold through the fostering cares of love,
to be turned against itself even ; for it has left
itself utterly defenceless.
Let us elevate and expand this idea from woman's
love, to universal love ; to that which constitutes
the life of the world and of civil society.
In the material world, it is constantly forwarding,
throughout the three kingdoms, that progressive
improvement which " beets the heavenward flame,"
and evoking from the womb of eternity new exist-
ences, which it emancipates from prejudices and
arms with liberty, for good or ill, and leaves free
to act even against their creator and emancipator.
In civil society, does love (call it charity, patriot-
ism, or what you will,) act with any other view ?
No ; its mission is to call to the work of social life,
to the enjoyment of political power, and the fran-
chises of the citizen all previously passed over; and
to raise up and help forward on their rude path the
weak and poor, now crawling on their hands and
knees under the ban of fate, and elevate them to
equal rights and liberties with their fellows.
A wish to absorb life is the lowest degree of
love ; the wish to breathe energy and fecundity
into life, is the highest. Its delight is to elevate,
expand, form what it loves ; aud all its happiness
is in seeing a new creature of God's animated by
its breath, and in accelerating the growth of that
being which may be either its blessing or its bane.
" Is not love of this disinterested kind a rare
miracle ? Is it not one of those brief moments in
which the pitchy night of our selfishness is illu-
mined by a ray of light from God ?"
No, it is a standing mii'acle, wrought before
your own eyes ; but you turn aside your head . . ,
it may be rare with the lover, but it is ever to be
found in the mother . . . Man, man, thou seekest
God in the heavens and under the earth . . . seek
Him in thy home, and thou wilt find Him there.
• In his Ecole des Femmes, and works generally.
CONCLUSION.
6b
Man, woman, child — three persons in one, mu-
tual mediators — this is the mystery of mysteries.
It was reserved for Christianity to place the family
upon the altar — divine idea ! There placed, there
left, the middle age, poor dreaming monk, gazed
upon it for fifteen hundred years without under-
standing. Unable to soar to the idea of the mother *,
as the principle of initiation, it wore itself out with
efforts on sterile ground, worshipped the Virgin f,
and left us Our Lady.
* The middle age never knew moderation, but either
soared too higli, or sank too low. The triumph of woman is
purel}' ideal in Beatrice; and then her passion sinks too low
in Griselda, who resigns even the feelings of the mother.
We meet with nothing practical. — A fnrliori, the absence of
all moderation in the sermons of the present day is mucli
more offensive. We always hear of heaven or hell — there is
no medium. Woman is held forth either as a saint or a pro-
stitute ; and not a word said of the good wife or mother.
This spirit of exaggeration renders preaching singularly
ineffective.
t We every where detect the poetic feelings of monks
and unmarried men. They make the Virgin younger and
j'ounger, more and more the maid, and less and less the
That which it could not accomplish is reserved
for a new epoch. Man of the modem world, the
work must be thine. Only, rajjt in thu ab.straction
of thy soaring mind, disdain not to lower thy looks
to women and children ; for, 'tis from them only
thou canst learn the meaning of life. Teach them
knowledge and the world— they will teach thee
God.
Let home be once more sacred ; and the totter-
ing edifice of religion and of that other religion,
politics, will settle down firm on its natural founda-
tions. Never let us forget that the humble heiirth-
stone, in which we only see the good old household
god, is the corner stone of the temple, and first
stone of the city— the ark, alike, of religion and
the laws.
mother. Empty and indecent legends abound ; whilst they
neglect that vital legend which would have made the middle
age anticipate the modern— //if ediicalion of Jusiis hij llic
Virgin. Yet could they hardly help feeling tliat he hnd the
mother's heart. He weeps over Lazarus. . . . Suffer these
little ones," &c.
ONE WORD TO THE PRIESTS
I have done ; but my heart has not. One word,
then, more.
One word to the priests. I had treated them
with all forbearance, wliL-n they turned round upon
me. Still, even now, I do not retort their attacks.
This work is not directed against them.
I only denounce their slavery, the unnatural po-
sition in which they are kept, and the strange fate
which renders them at once unhappy and danger-
ous ; and if this volume produce any effect, it will
be to accelerate the moment of their deliverance,
the moment of their personal and spiritual enfran-
chisement.
Whatever they may do or say, they will never
hinder me from taking an interest in their fate.
1 find no fault with them. They are not free to
be just, or to love, or to hate : they are compelled
to speak, feel, and think as their superiors dictate.
The very men who are letting them loose upon me,
are those who are at this moment instituting the
severest inquisition over them *. The more lonely
and unhai)py they are made, the more serviceable
" We learn from the details published in one of our news-
papers concerning the latest ecclesiastical retreats, that
most bishops impose on the priests within their jurisdiction
the Jesuitical rule called mnnifestation of conscience, by
which they are bound to confess to ilie confessor delegated by
the bishop, and to inform against one another. This obligation
extends to women who may have been compromised by
priests. See the Bien Social, Journal du Clerge Secondaire
(Nov. 1844). This Catholic paper was taken in by three
thousand priests, after it had been only a year in existence,
when it was anathematized by the Archbishop of Paris (June
1845). — See, also, an excellent article in the Reveil de VAin
(Nov. 17th, 1844); and the courageous letters of the Abbe
Thions in VneBien Public of Ma^on To speak out, with such
a mountain heaped up upon a man's breast, argues an heroic
heart. — We must here name with all respect the two Alig-
nols. But what do they hope to gain by their journey to
Rome ? What do they expect to find in that empty sepul-
chre ?
will their restless activity become. If they have nor
home, nor family, nor country, nor heart, all the
better. For the working of a dead system, dead
men are wanted — wandering, anxious, unburied,
restless corpses.
They have been lured by professions of unity,
and the prete.xt of an universal church, to quit the
ways of the Galilean Church. Verily, they now
taste the fruits of their conversion ! They have
found out what Rome is, and what it is to have a
Jesuit for a bishop as well. ... If Rome ever had
universality of spirit, (which is the only true Uni-
versal Church) she has long lost it. In modern
times, it has been rediscovei-ed, — and by France.
Morally speaking, France may be said to have been
the pope for the two last centui-ies ; for, under one
form or another, we have possessed the authority.
Louis XIV., Montesquieu, Voltaii'e and Rousseau,
the Constituent Assembly, Napoleon and his Code,
have alternately made France the centre of Eiu'ope;
all other nations are eccentric.
The world is whirling on and flying onwards,
far, far from the middle age ; an age which most
have forgotten, but which I never shall. The poor
mockery of an imitation of it which is paraded
before my eyes, will never change my feelings
towards those sombre and sorrowful times which I
have known and sympathized with so long *. The
love I bear towards these bygone times whose ashes
I have rekindled, prevents me from being indifferent
even to its most faithless representatives. 1 draw
comparisons, without a particle of hate, and they
sadden me. I cannot pass the cloisters of Notre-
Dame, without exclaiming with the ancient — " 0
* As long ago as 1833, I formed a wish and expressed a
hope for the transformation of the principle of the middle
age: — " It will transform itself to perpetuate its life." See
my History of France (vol. i. p. 282 of the translation in
Whittaker's " Popular Library.") See, also, ray Introduction
a I'Histoire Universellc, 1831.
miseram domum, qnam dispari dominaris domino!"
Alas, poor house, thou hast made a sad change of
masters !
Never have 1 for a moment been insensible to
the humiliation of the Church, or the sufferings of
the priests. They are all vividly impressed both
on my imagination and my heart. I have traced
this hapless man in his career of privations, and
the woes of a life to which he is doomed by a hy-
pocritical policy. And in his hour of loneliness, by
the sad and cheerless hearth where he will some-
times sit of an evening, and relieve his bursting
heart with tears, let him bear in mind that there is
one man who has often wept with him, and that
that man is myself.
Who but would pity this victim of social contra-
dictions ? The laws, as if in mockery, enjoin him
things diametrically opposed to one another. They
will, and they will not, have him obey the dictates
of nature. The canon law says. No — and the civil.
Yes. If he act upon the latter, the man of the civil
law, the judge, to whom he looks for pi'otection,
turns priest, seizes him by his robe, and hands him
over, degraded, to the yoke of the canon law. . . .
Come to an understanding, then, ye laws, and let
us have some certain standard by which to regulate
ourselves. If two contradictory laws be equally
binding, what is he to do who believes that both
are to be held sacred * ? . . .
Oh ! what overflowing love I feel towards all
these wretched men ! How many prayers have I
not offered up for their deliverance from a position
so revolting to nature and so inconsistent with the
modern march of mind ! . . . Oh ! that I might
restore and rekindle the poor priest's hearth, give
• The clergy of the several parts of the south of Germany,
who are good Catholics, have formally expressed a wish
that this anomalous state may be put an end to, and the
church conform to the progress of the age, which has caused
marriage to be regarded as the true modern state, just as
celibacy was (ideally at least,) that of the middle age. —
The position of the priest— alone, yet not alone ; free, yet not
free — in the midst of a world with which he cannot assimilate,
suggests the idea of a convict condemned to solitary con-
finement, who should carry his cell about with him. Nothing
can be more likely to drive him mad. (Compare Leon
Faucher's admirable articles.) Every one knows the late
story of the Benedictine abbe (if I remember rightly in the
Tyrol) who, shrinking from violating his vows, and being
unable to obtain a dispensation, stabbed himself to the
heart.
him back the first rights of man, put him once
more upon the path of truth and of life, and say to
him, — Quit that deadly shade ; and take thy place
with us, my brother, in the sunshine of God.
I have always felt a peculiar interest in two
classes of men, both leading a solitary and monkish
life — soldiers and priests. And repeatedly have I
reflected with sorrow on the two vast, but sterile
armies, to whom intellectual food is either alto-
gether refused, or meted out with grudging hand.
Great need have those whose heart has been rifled
from their bosom, to be sustained with the living
food of the mind.
I shall not attempt to suggest here the remedies
for so serious a state of things. They will probably
work their own cure in process of time.
It may, however, be safely predicted that one
day, these two terms — priest and soldier will indicate
two different periods of life rather than two differ-
ent callings. Priest originally signifies elder ; a
young priest is a contradiction in terms.
The soldier is the young man, who, after the
schooling of the child, and the schooling of his
trade or profession, enters the great national
school of the army to prove and harden himself
before he takes a wife and settles down a family
man. The life of the soldier, when the state
shall have made it what it ought to be, will be
the complement of education ; and the experi-
ence derived from its mingled studies, travels,
and danger, will turn to the advantage of the
family ties to be subsequently contracted.
The priest, on the contray, in the most exalted
sense of the term, ought to be an old man, as he
originally was, or, at the least, a man of mature age
— one, who having mixed with the world and- had
experience of family life can enter into the feelings
of the great family of man. Taking his place among
the old men, like the elders of Israel, he would
impart to the young of the treasures of his expe-
rience, and would be the universal counsellor — the
friend and advocate of the poor, the ready um-
pire whose arbitration would prevent recourse to
law, the sensible physician who would labour for
the prevention of evils. A young man is not fitted
for this important task, from the very impetuous-
ness and restlessness of his years. It requires a
man who has seen, learnt, and suffered much, and
whose heart is with the words of peace that direct
us to the world to come.
THE END.
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WIIITTAKKR ^ CO., AVE MARIA LANE, LONDON.
THE PEOPLE.
M. MICHELET,
MEMUER OF THE INSTITUTE,
AUTHOR OF " PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES,''
" HISTORY OF FRANCE," &C. &C.
TRANSLATED BY
G. H. SMITH, F.G.S.
LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE.
CONTENTS.
DEDICATION TO M. EDGAR ftOlNET.
PAGE
. 1
PART THE FIRST.
OF SLAVERY AND HATE,
CHAPTER I.
Servitudes of the Peasant
CHAPTER II.
Servitudes of the Workman dependant on Machinery ... 1 3
CHAPTER III.
Servitudes of the Workman 18
CHAPTER IV.
Servitudes of the Manufacturer 21
CHAPTER V.
Servitudes of the Shopkeeper 23
CHAPTER VI.
Servitudes of the Public Servant 25
CHAPTER VII.
Servitudes of the Rich and of the Bourgeois 27
CHAPTER VIII.
Review of the foregoing Part— Introduction to the
Second 31
PART THE SECOND.
OF ENFRANCHISEMENT BY LOVE. — NATURE.
CHAPTER I.
The Instinct of the People ; a Study hitherto neglected 34
CHAPTER II.
The Instinct of the People ; Altered, but Povrerful , 35
CHAPTER III.
Does the People gain much by sacrificing its Instinct 1 —
Bastard Classes 37
CHAPTER IV.
Of the Simple.— The Child, Interpreter of the People ... 39
CHAPTER V.
Continuation of the Subject. — Is the Natural Instinct
of the Child Depraved ? 40
CHAPTER VI.
Digression. — Instinct of Animals. — Claim in their Fa-
vour 42
CHAPTER VII.
The Instinct of the Simple.— The Instinct of Genius. —
The Man of Genius is, pre-eminently, the Simple,
the Child, and the People 44
CHAPTER VIII.
The Birth of Genius, Type of the Birth of Society 45
CHAPTER IX.
Review of the Preceding Part. — Introduction to the
Third 47
PART THE THIRD.
OF ENFRANCHISEMENT BY LOVE. — OUR NATIVE LAND.
CHAPTER I.
Friendship 4S
CHAPTER II.
Of Love and Marriage 51
CHAPTER III.
Of Association 52
CHAPTER IV.
Our Native Land. — Are Nationalities about to dis-
appear? 54
CHAPTER V.
France , 56
CHAPTER VI.
Superiority of France, both as Dogma and Legend. —
France is a Religion 57
CHAPTER VII.
The Faith of the Revolution. — It did not preserve this
Faith to the end, and has not transmitted its Spirit
by Education 53
CHAPTER Vin.
No Education without Faith 59
CHAPTER IX.
God in our Country. — The Young Country of the Fu-
ture.—Sacrifice CO
THE PEOPLE,
TO M. EDGAR QUINET.
This book is more than a book; it is myself, there-
fore it belongs to you.
It is I — and therefore I presume to say it is
you, my friend. You have observed with truth,
that our thoughts, whether we communicate them
or not, always agree. Our hearts are one . . .
beautiful harmony, wliich may appear surprising ;
but is it not natural 1 Has not the very variety
of our labours sprung from the same living prin-
ciple : " Sympathy with France ; love of our
country ?"
Receive then this book of " The People," because
it is you — because it is I. By your military de-
scent and my manufacturing one, we represent in
our two selves, as well as any others perliaps, the
two modern faces of the people, and its recent
advancement.
I have made this book out of myself, out of my
life, and out of my heart. It is born of my expe-
rience, much more than of my studies. I have
derived it from my observation, from my relations
of friendship and of neighboui-hood ; have picked
it up upon the roads ; chance loves to favour those
who follow out one continuous idea. Above all, I
have found it in the recollections of my youth.
To know the life of the people, their labours and
their sufferings, I had but to interrogate my
memoi'y.
For 1 too, my friend, have laboured with my
hands, and have earned the true name of modern
man, that of workman, in more senses than one.
Before making books I composed them (as printer) ;
I have arranged letters before arranging ideas. I
have known the weariness of the work-room, the
depression of the long hours of . . .
Sad epoch ! those were the last years of the
Empire : all that I prized seemed doomed to perish,
— family, fortune, country. — What is best in me, I
owe without a doubt to these trials ; whatever little
the man or the historian is worth I ascribe to them;
it is from them above all, that I have retained a
profound appreciation of the people; the full know-
ledge of their internal worth, of the rirtue of sacrifice;
a tender recollection of those golden hearts which
I have met with in the lower orders.
It is but natural, then, that knowing as much as
any one can of the former history of the people,
more than this, that having myself been one of
them and lived as they, I should feel, when they
are spoken of, an engrossing anxiety for the truth.
Whenever the composition of my History has led
me to the consideration of the questions of the day,
and I have glanced at the books where those ques-
tions ai'e discussed, I must own that I have been
surprised to find almost all contradicting my recol-
lections. On these occasions I have closed my books
and thrown myself again as muchas possible amongst
the people ; the solitary writer has plunged again
into the crowd, listened to its murmur, marked its
words. . . . It was indeed the same people; the only
change has been in externals ; my memory did not
deceive me. ... I went on then, consulting men,
hearing them speak for themselves of their own lot;
gathering from their own mouths that which one
does not always meet with in the most brilliant
writers— words of good sense.
This inquiry I began at Lyons, about ten years
since. I have followed it up in other towns, stu-
dying at the same time with practical and matter of
fact men, the real situation of the rural districts,
so neglected by our economists. The amount of new
information which I thus acquired, and which no
book gives, would hardly be credited. Next to the
conversation of men of genius, or of remarkable
learning, that of the people is assuredly the most
instructive. If you cannot converse with Beran-
ger, Lamennais, or Lamartine, go to the fields and
talk with the peasant. What is to be learnt from
the middle class ? and with respect to the fashion-
able, I never left a drawing-room without finding
my heart contracted and colder.
My varied historical studies have opened up to me
facts of the greatest interest, on which all histo-
rians are silent ; for instance, the diff"erent phases
and alternations in small properties before the Revo-
lution. My inquest on the living has also taught
me many things, which are not in statistics. I will
cite one, which to some may be a matter of in-
difference, but to me is most important, and
worthy of all attention — the immense quantities of
cottons for clothing or houseliold use, amassed by
poor families about the year 1842, although wages
had fallen, or, at least, had diminished in value
through the natural fall in the value of money.
This fact, grave in itself, as proof of pi-ogress in
cleanliness, a virtue closely allied to all others, is
still more so, inasmuch as it proves a gi'owing fixity
in domestic life, and, above all, the influence of
the wife, who, gaining little or nothing herself, could
not make this outlay but by setting aside part of the
husband's wages; in all such households the wife is
economy, order, providence. Each addition to her
influence is a step in morality*.
• It is natural to conclude, from this immense acquisition
of linen for household purposes— a fact to which all the
manufacturers can bear witness — that some little furniture
has been got together as well. There is nothing surprising
THE PEOPLE.
This instance is not without its use in showing
how insufficient all the documents amassed in sta-
tistical and other works on economy are, even sup-
posing them exact, to convey a correct idea of the
people. They give partial and artificial results
taken from a confined point of view, which lead to
misapprehensions.
Wi-iters and artists who follow a process the
direct reverse of these abstract methods, ought to
be able to carry the sentiment of life into the study
of the people. Many Indeed of the most emi-
nent have handled this grand subject, and their
talents have not failed them ; their success has
been immense. Europe, so long uninventive, seizes
with avidity the productions of our literature. The
English write little else now-a-days than articles in
reviews; and as to German books, who reads them
except Germans ?
It would be worth while to examine whether
those French works, which are so popular through-
out Europe, and carry such authority with them,
are a true representation of France : whether
they have not rather given certain exceptional
views, and most unfavourable ones; and whether
paintings, wherein only our vices or deformities are
to be found, have not done us an immensity of harm
with foreign nations ? The talents and sincerity of
the authors, and the known liberality of their prin-
ciples, give an overwhelming weight to their
writings. The world has accepted their works as a
terrible judgment of France against herself.
France has this to be said against her : she
shows herself naked to the world. Other nations
keep themselves, in a manner, veiled — dressed up.
Germany, and even England, with all her " Com-
missions" and all her publicity, are but little known
in comparison. They cannot see themselves, for
want of centralization.
What is it that most catches the eye in the
human figure divested of clothing 1 Its defects !
Whatever blemish exists it instantly obtrudes itself
on our notice. What would be the effect if an
obliging hand were to place a magnifying-glass
over this very blemish, to dilate it into colossal
proportions, and to bring it pitilessly forwai-d into
the full glare of light, so that the smallest uneven-
uess of the skin should become unnaturally exag-
gerated to the astonished beholder 1
Here is precisely what has occurred with France.
Her undeniable faults, which her interminable
activity, stirring interests, and ever-teeming ideas
satisfactorily explain, have been magnified by these
powerful writers, until they have gi'own into mon-
strosities. And the consequence is, that Europe
looks upon her as it would do on a monster.
Nothing has more materially served, in the poli-
tical world, the feeling of the respectable classes. All
aristocracies — English, Russian, and German —
have only to poiut to her own testimony against
in the circumstance that the workman deposits less in the
savings' banks than the servant. The latter buys no fur-
niture, few clothes ; he gradually manages in get clothed by
his master. So it is a mistake to estimate the economical
progress of the people by the deposits in the savings' banks ;
or to believe that the surplus which is not vested therein
goes to the public-house. The wife, especially, would seem
to strive to make her little home as neat and attractive as
possible, to win her husband to stay in it ; and hence that
passion for flowers which may be observed even in the
classes but one remove trora actual distress.
herself; the pictures she draws of herself, by the
hands of her best writers, the greater part of whom
are the friends of the people, and partizans of re-
form. Is not the people that has been thus limned
the terror of the world? Where are the armies or
fortifications strong enough to hem them in, to
watch them, until a favourable occasion arise for
overwhelming them ?
Immortal and classic romances, revealing the
domestic tragedies of the higher and wealthier
classes, have made it an established article of
European belief, that domestic life is not to be
found in France.
Other works, of incontestable talent, but dealing
in terrible phantasmagoria, have given as examples
of ordinary life in our towns, retaken criminals
and returned convicts.
A painter of manners, of wonderful genius for
details, amuses himself with painting a loathsome
village ale-house, a low tavern for the reception of
thieves and blackguards, and to this hideous sketch,
he has the effrontery to affix a word which is the
name of the majority of the inhabitants of France.
Europe reads greedily, admires, and recognizes
such or such a touch from life ; and from some
minute incident which startles her with its truth,
jumps to the conclusion that all the rest is true.
No people upon earth can stand such a test.
Tiiis singular mania for blackening ourselves, for
parading our sores, and, as it were, for courting
disgrace, will be fatal to us in the end. Many, I
know, belie the present, that they may hasten a
more brilliant future, and exaggei-ate our evils to
hurry us on to the fruition of the felicity which
their theories are to secure us*. Have a care,
nevertheless, have a care ; it is a dangerous game
to play. Europe takes no account of all these clever
tricks ; if we call ourselves despicable, she is very
ready to believe us. Italy, in the sixteenth cen-
tury was still a great country. The land of Michael
Angelo and Christopher Columbus wanted not for
• Philosophers, socialists, politicians, all men now-a-days
agree to fritter away from the minds of the people the idea
of France, as one great independent whole. Most dangerous
is this ! Remember that this people, more than any other, is,
in all the excellence and force of the term, a true saciety.
Isolate it from its social idea it lapses into weakness. All
governments have been telling it for these fifty years, that
the France of the Revolution, which was its glory, its creed,
was a chaos, a contradiction (un non-sens), a pure negation.
The Revolutioii, on the other hand, had cried down ancient
France, and told the people that nothing of its past history
deserved remembrance. It forgot the old ; the iiew is fading
away. It has been no fault of politicians if the people have
not become a tabula rasa, and forgot its own existence.
How should it be other than weak now ? It knows not
itself. Every effort is made to efface from Its mind the
sense of the glorious unity which was its life: you are
plucking its soul out of it. This soul was its sense of
France as a grand fraternity of living men, as a glorious
companionship with our Frenchmen of the olden ages. Yet
these olden ages are within it, are part and parcel of its
being ; it is conscious of their stir within, yet cannot re-
cognize them. It is not told what that grand deep voice is,
which murmurs within it, like the distant bass of an organ
in a cathedral.
Men of reflection and study, artists, writers — all have a
holy and sacred duty to fulfil towards the people; and this
is, to throw aside our sorry paradoxes, our freaks of the
mind, which have aided politicians not a little in concealing
France from the people, enfeebling its idea of it, in making
it despise its country.
energies. But no soonei' had she proclaiiued her-
self miserable and degraded, hy the voice of Ma-
chiavel, than the world eclioed the words, and
marched upon her.
We are not Italy, God be praised ; and the day
when the world shall agree to come to visit our
France, will be hailed by our soldiers as the
happiest of their lives.
Let it suffice to all nations to learn, that this
people in no way resemble their pretended por-
traits. Not that our great artists have always
failed; but they have chiefly delighted in excep-
tional details, — in accidental effects, at the most ;
they have given, in each style, the lesser, the under
side of things. They have appeared to think the
broader features too well known, trivial, and vulgar.
They have required effects, and have searched for
them out of the beaten track of life. Born, one
may say, of agitation and tumult, they have painted
with a passionate and stormy strength, yet, at
times, with a touch as true and delicate as strong.
Their chief defect has been in the want of any large
perception of harmony.
Our novelists have supposed that art lies in the re-
volting, and believed that its most infallible effects
were to be found in moral deformity. To them, a
vagabond love has seemed more poetical than
the domestic affections ; robbery than industry ;
the galleys than the workshop. Had they but
tasted for themselves, by personal suff'erings, of the
profound realities of the life of this epoch, they
would then have seen that the family circle, the
hard work, the lives of the humblest and the
meanest of the people, have a holy poetry of their
own. To feel this, and to describe it, is not the
business of the machinist — is no proper subjectfor
stage effect ; only it requires to bring to the study
the " single eye," adapted to the subdued light of
these humble scenes, fitted to penetrate into the
obscure, tiie small, and the humble, aided by the
heart which shrinks not from the recesses of the
fireside, thrown into Rembrandt shades.
Whenever our great writers have taken this
view, they have been worthy of all admiration ; but,
too generally, they have turned aside their eyes
to the fantastic, the violent, the strange, the rare ;
nor have they even deigned to warn us that they
iiave been painting the exception. Their readers,
• their foreign readers especially, have taken their
paintings as the rule. They have said, " Such is
this people." And I, who am come of the people ;
I, who have lived, worked, suffered with the
people ; I, who more than any other have eai'ned
the right to say that 1 know them ; I now come
forward to oppose to all these exceptional paintings
the people in their personality.
And this personality I have not seized on the
surface, in its picturesque and dramatic points of
view ; I have not seen it from without, but liave
experienced it from within ; and from this expe-
rience I have been enabled to comprehend more
than one individual trait of the people which they
possess without knowing it. Wherefore ? Be-
cause I could trace it to its historical origin, and
see it growing from the beginning of time. Who-
ever restricts himself to the present, the actual,
will never comprehend the present or the actual.
Whoever contents himself with seeing the exterior,
and painting the form, does not see it even. To
see it correctly, to paint it faithfully, we must
know that which is within; no painting without
anatomy.
It is not in a small work like this, that I can
teach such a science. All I can do is, to throw out
a few remarks essential to the comprehension of
the state of our manners, to give some general re-
sults, setting aside all details bearing upon method,
manner of learning, and the preparatory labour re-
quired.
And here one word only. The one feature
which (in my long study of this people) has always
struck me as pre-eminently remarkable is, that
amongst the most disorderly, the most vicious, and
the most wretched, I have found a mine of senti-
ment and a warmth of heart rarely met with in
the wealthier classes. And this lies on the surface,
is obvious to all observers. When the cholera was
raging, who was it that adopted the children left
orphans ? The poor.
The faculty of devotion, the power of sacrifice —
that is my rule for classifying mankind. Whoever
possesses it in the highest degree, he it is who may
best claim the title of hero. Superiority of talents,
which results partly from education, can never enter
into competition with this divine faculty.
To this there is one common-place answer, —
" that the people, genei-ally speaking, are but short-
sighted ; that they are led away by an instinct of
goodness, the blind impulse of a good heart, because
they cannot foresee the cost." Were this observa-
tion correct, it in no way takes from what must be
allowed them, — the indefatigable sacrifice, the per-
severing devotion, of which the labouring poor so
often give an example ; and a devotion which does
not end even with the immolation of one entire
life, but often lasts from one life to another during
whole generations.
Many an affecting story I could tell in proof, but
I must not. However, I am strongly tempted, my
friend, to give you one — that of my own family.
You have not yet heard it. Our conversations have
been more frequently of philosophy or politics, than
of any personal matters. I yield to the temptation,
which affords me the rich delight of acknowledging
the pei"severing and heroic sacrifices of my family,
in order to advance my welfare, and of expressing
my gratitude to my relatives, some of whom have
in their modesty buried superior talents in obscu-
rity, and have only wished to live in me.
Both my father and my mother's family, the
one Picard, the other belonging to the Ardennes,
were peasants, who joined manual labour to the
pursuit of agriculture. They were both large
(twelve children in the one, nineteen in the other),
and many of my uncles and aunts on both sides
abstained from marrying in order to contribute' to
the education of some of the boys who were placed
at school. Sacrifice the first which I have to
notice.
In my mother's family particularly, the sisters,
all remarkable for economy, seriousness, and the
austere virtues, were slaves to their brothers; and
to help them forward in the world, completely
buried themselves in the village. Several of them,
however, though without cultivation, and living
apart from the world on the skirts of a wood,
were endowed with acute and refined intellects. I
have heard one of them, who was advanced in
years, recite the ancient border stories as well as
Walter Scott. They all had great clearness and
b2
THE PEOPLE,
strength of understanding. There was no lack of
priests among their cousins and relations, priests of
divers sorts, worldly and fanatic; but they never
gained the ascendancy. Our prudent and sensible
spinstei's never gave them the slightest hold upon
them. They were fond of relating how one of our
great uncles of the name of Miehaud (was it ? or
Paillard ?) was burnt once upon a time for having
written a certain book.
My father's father, who was a teacher of music
at Laon, got together his little savings after the
Reign of Terror and came to Paris, where my
father was employed in the printing-office of the
assignats. Instead of laying out his money in
land, as othei's were then doing, he entrusted all
that he had to my father, his eldest son, and em-
barked the whole in a printing-office, exposed to
the risks of the Revolution. A brother and sister
of my father's determined not to marry in order to
forward this arrangement; but my father married
one of these same sedate spinsters of the Ardennes,
of whom I spoke just now. And 1 was born in
1798, in the choir of the chapel of a nunnery,
occupied at the time partly by our printing-
office, — occupied, not profaned; for what is the
press in modern times, if not the holy ark ?
The printing-office succeeded admirably at first,
fed by the debates of our assemblies, by the news
from our armies, by the stirring life of the times.
About the year 1800, a heavy blow was dealt it by
the general suppression of newspapers. My father
was permitted to continue but one, an ecclesiastical
paper, on which he made a large outlay, when his
licence was suddenly recalled to be given to a
priest upon whom Napoleon thought he could
depend, but who soon betrayed him.
We know how this great man was punished by
these same px'iests, because he believed the conse-
cration of Rome to be better than that of France.
In 1810, he saw more cleai'ly. But on whom fell
his wrath ? On the press ! He hurled sixteen de-
crees against it in two years. My father, half
ruined by him to advantage the priests, was now
wholly so, to expiate their faults.
One morning we received a visit from a gentle-
man more polite than the generality of these
imperial agents were, who informed us that his
majesty the erapei'or had reduced the number of
pi'inters to sixty; the great printers were untouch-
ed, the little ones shut up ; but with a magnificent
indemnification of nearly a shilling in the pound.
We were of the number; so there was nothing left
for us to do but to be resigned and die of hunger.
But we were in debt. The emperor gave us no
reprieve from the Jews, as he had done Alsace.
We could only hit upon one resource, this was to
print for our creditors some works which belonged
to my father. We could no longer employ work-
men, so did the work ourselves. My father, who
attended to some business out of doors, could not
help us. My mother, an invalid, applied herself
to book-stitching, cut, and folded. I, a child, com-
posed. My grandfather, old and very feeble, un-
dertook the hard work of the press, and worked
the machine with his trembling hands.
The books which we printed, and which sold
well enough, contrasted singularly from their
frivolity with these years of tragic and terrible de-
struction; being trifling games, plays, charades,
and acrostics. There was nothing here to feed the
soul of the young compositor. But so it was, the
very emptiness and dryness of these sorry produc-
tions left my mind the more at liberty. Never, I do
believe, have 1 so revelled in my imagination as
during the time I was fixed, immoveable, at the
case. The more I was animated by my ideal
romances, the more rapid became my hand, the
quicker I picked up the letters. . . .And then I
learnt that manual labours, which call for neither
extreme delicacy nor great strength, are by no
means unfavourable to the exercise of the imagina-
tion. I have known many distinguished females
say that they could neither think, nor talk, so well
as when employed at their needlework.
I was now twelve years of age, and knew as yet
nothing, unless it be the few words of Latin I
learnt from an old bookseller who had been a
village schoolmaster, an enthusiastic student of
grammar ; who was also a man of antique mould,
and a warm revolutionist, but who, nevertheless,
had saved at the peril of his life the emigrants he
detested. He left me, on his death-bed, all that
he had in the world- — a manuscript, a very re-
mai'kable grammar, though inconi[)lete; for he had
been able to consecrate to it the labours of but
twenty or thirty years.
Solitary and free, left entirely to my own
guidance by the excessive indulgence of my
parents, I was all imagination. I had read some
few volumes which fell into my hands, a My-
thology, a Boileau, and a few pages of The Imi-
tation.
In consequence of the extreme and unceasing
embarrassments of my family, my mother an
invalid, and my father occupied out of doors, I
had not yet imbibed any religious ideas. . . And
yet, in these pages, I descry, all at once, at the
term of this sorrowful world, deliverance by death,
another life and hope ! Religion thus imbibed,
without human interposition, took strong hold
upon me. It was something I could call my own ;
a free, living source of comfort, so interfused into
my very being as to assimilate all to itself, gaining
strength as it grew from a thousand tender and
holy tilings both in poetry and the arts, which are
erroneously su])posed to be alien from religion.
How shall 1 describe the state of dreamy de-
light into which I was thrown by the first words of
The Imitation ! 1 did not read, I listened. , , it
was as if this sweet, paternal voice was addressing
myself. ... I have before me now the large
unfuj'nished I'oom, cold and desolate ; it appeared
to me actually illuminated by a mysterious
radiance. ... I could not enter deeply into this
book, not comprehending Christ, but 1 felt God.
The strongest impression left me by my younger
days next to this, is the Museum of French Monu-
ments, since so shamefully destroyed. It was
there, and there only, that I received the first
vivid impressions of history. In fancy I filled
those tombs — I felt the dead, as it were, through
the marble; and it was not without some terror
that I visited the vaults, where slept Dagobert,
Chilperic, and Fredegonda.
The scene of my daily toil, our printing-office,
was little less sombre. For some time this was a
cellar, a cellar as regarded the boulevard where
we lived, but the ground-floor of the lower street.
I had there for company sometimes my grand-
father, but always a certain industrious spider,
M. MICHELET'S OWN HISTORY.
who worked close to me, and certainly harder than
I. Amongst privations and hardships, which were
certainly beyond what fall to the lot of most
workmen, I had many blessings. The kindness
of my parents, their faith in my future success —
inexplicable truly, wlien I reflect how little pro-
gress I had made. My bounden work excepted, I
was left entirely uncontrolled ; a freedom wliich I
never abused. I was an appi'entice, but not placed
in contact with minds of a coarse order, whose
brutality would perhaps have stripped me of this
flower of liberty. In the morning, before I went
to my work, I waited upon my old master, who
gave me a task of some five or six hnes ; and
I have retained this much from my experience at
this age, that improvement depends far less
upon length of tasks and hours of application
than is supposed. Children can take in but a
little each day; they are like a vase with a narrow
neck ; you may pour little or pour much, but
much will not enter at a time.
In spite of my want of capacity for music, which
horrified my grandfather, I was quite sensible of
the regal and majestic harmony of the Latin
tongue. Its grand and sonorous Italian melody
warmed me like a beam of the southern sun. I
was born, like a plant in the shade, between two
Paris streets, and so throve under this genial
warmth from another clime. Without know-
ing anything of quantity or of the profound rhythm
of the ancient tongues, I had sought for, and dis-
covered in my themes, Romano-rustic melodies,
like the proses of the Middle Ages, A child, so
that he is left to himself, will follow precisely the
same road as an infant people.
With the exception of the miseries ever at-
tendant on poverty, and which I felt keenly in the
winter, this very time of mixed labour, of Latin
and of friendship (for I had a friend, of whom
I shall speak in this book), was sweet as it passed,
is sweet to remember. Rich in youth, in imagina-
tion, perhaps in love already, I envied none. As
I have before said, man naturally would not know
envy. It must be taught him.
Soon, however, all became gloom. My mother
grew worse, France also (Moscow! . . 1813 !) The
indemnification allowed us by government, was ex-
hausted. In this extremity of penury, a friend of
my father's oS"ered to get me into the Imperial
printing-office ; a great temptation to my poor
parents. Few would have hesitated — but faith
was always strong in our family — first, faith in my
father, to whom the whole of our domestic circle
had sacrificed themselves ; then faith in me. It
was I who was to repair, to save all.
Had my parents, yielding to the reason of the
case, made a mechanic of me, and saved them-
selves, should I have been lost ? No ! I see
amongst the industrial portion of the community
men of great merit, who for intellect and intelli-
gence are at least equal to men of letters, and are
still better as to worth. . . . But, again, what dif-
ficulties should I have encountered ; what strug-
gles in the absence of all means ; and amidst the
general distress of the times ? My father, without
resources, my mother still ill, made up their minds
that I should have leai'uing, whatever might
happen.
Our situation pressed for decision ; so, knowing
neither verse-making, nor Greek, I entered the
third form at the college of Charlemagne. My
difficulties may easily be comprehended, as I had
no tutor to assist me. My mother, so firm up
to this moment, gave way, and wept. My father
set about writing Latin verses for me ; he who liad
never attempted them before.
My greatest mercy in this temble passage from
solitude into such a crowd, from night to day, was,
without doubt, the professor, Mons. Andrieu D'Alba,
a man of equal piety and goodness of heart. My
worst trial was my young companions. I was
thrown among them like an owl in full daylight, all
aghast. They thought me a fit subject for ridicule,
and 1 now believe they were right ; at the time, I
attributed their jests to my appearance, to my po-
verty. I began, too, for the first time, to perceive
one thing, — that I was poor.
On this I inferred that all the rich were wicked ;
that all were so, for I saw few who were not richer
than myself. I sank into a state of misanthropy,
rarely felt by youth. I sought the most deserted
streets, in the most desei'ted quarter of Paris, " Le
Marais." But, at any rate, during this excess of
antipathy to mankind, there remained this good
within me — I felt no envy.
My greatest solace, that which renovated my
spirit most, was, on Sundays and Thursdays, to
read two or three times following, a canto of Vir-
gil, a book of Horace. By degrees, they became
impressed on my memory, for I was never able to
learn a lesson by heart, as others do.
I i-ecollect, that in this fulness of my misery, suf-
fering both from present privations and fears of the
future, the enemy at our gates (1814 !) and my
own enemies daily jeering me, one Thursday
morning, I huddled myself together. I had no
fire, the ground was covered with snow, I could
not be sure of another meal — all seemed over with
me ; but I had within me, without any mixture of
religious hope, a purely stoical sentiment. I sud-
denly struck my oak table (which I have always
kept), with my frost-bitten hand, and my heart
throbbed with the virile joy of youth and divina-
tion of the future.
" What have I to fear now," I said to myself ;
" I who have died so often both in myself and in
history ? What have I to wish for ? God has
granted me, through history, to become a sharer in
all tilings."
Life has but one hold upon me. I felt this, the
twelfth day of February last. Thirty years had
passed since the day of which I have been speak-
ing. The weather was the same — there was the
same snow, I was seated at the same table. One
thought choked me — " You are warm, others cold
. . . this is not right . . . Ah ! what can comfort
me for this hard inequality ?" Then, looking at my
hand which, since 1813, has borne the marks of the
frost, I said to console myself — " If thou hadst
worked with the people thou wouldst not be work-
ing for them. . . . Cheer up; if thou givest thy
country its history I allow thee to be happy*".
To return. My faith was not absurd, as it was
founded on will ; I believed in the future, because
» I owed much to the encouragement of my illustrious
professors, MM. Villemain and Leclerc ; and 1 can never
forget that once M. Villemain, after the reading of an
exercise which much pleased him, descended from his seat,
and came and placed himself by my side on the school form.
THE PEOPLE.
I would make it for myself. My studies finished
soon and successfully. 1 had the happiness, on
leaving college, to have escaped the two influences
which were the bane of the young student : from
the philosophy of the doctrinists, majestic, but
sterile; and from literary employment, which was
easy to be obtained from the publishers, who were
then glad to catch at anything,
I would not live by my pen. I preferred a real
trade; so chose that for which my studies had best
fitted me — teaching. I thought with Rousseau,
that literature ought to be a sacred thing, the lux-
ury of life, the treasured flower of the soul. How
happy used I to feel when, after having given my
morning lessons, I returned to my home in the
fauxbourg, near Pere la Chaise, and luxuriated all
day long in reading the poets — Homer, Sophocles,
Theocritus, and sometimes the historians. One of
my old schoolfellows and my dearest friends, Mons.
Poret, was pursuing a similar course of study, and
our daily readings formed a never-ending ^topic
of conversation during our long walks in the forest
of Vincennes.
This careless life lasted little less than ten years,
during which I never suspected that I was one
day to turn author. I taught the languages, phi-
losophy, and history ; and in 1821 I gained a pro-
fessorship in a college by public competition. In
1827, two works, which I published at the same
time, my " Vim," and my " Precis de VHistoire
Moderne," gained me a professorship at the Nor-
mal school *.
Teaching was of great advantage to me. The
terrible trial of my college life had changed my
character, had shrunk me up, and made me timid
and mistrustful. Married early, and living in
complete solitude, I cared less and less for the
converse of my fellows. The society of my pupils,
at the Normal school and elsewhere, served to
soften and expand my heart. This rising gene-
ration, full of the amiability and confidence of
youth, who looked up to and believed in me,
reconciled me to my species. I was touched, often
saddened, at seeing how rapidly wave after wave
of youth passed by me ; hardly did I attach
myself, before they were gone. And now they are
all dispei'sed, and many — so young ! — are dead.
Few of them have forgotten me ; for myself, I
shall never forget them, living or dead.
They rendered me, without knowing it, an
immense service ; for if I had, as an historian,
any especial merit which upheld me by the side of
my illustrious predecessors, 1 owed it to teaching,
which was with me a labour of love. The great
historians of whom I speak were grand, brilliant,
just, profound ; but I loved more.
I have also suffered more. The trials of my
childhood are ever present to me ; I have never
lost the imjiression of my hard working days, of a
harsh laborious way of life — I am still one of the
people,
1 said a little while ago, that I grew up like
a shrub half hidden between two streets ; but the
shrub has kept its sap as well as the floweret
of the Alps. My solitary way of life, which turns
* I quitted it with regret in 1837, when the eclectic in-
fluence was uppermost. In 1838, the Institute and the
College of France having both elected me, I obtained the
chair I now occupy.
even Paris into a desert, the independence of my
study, the unfettered freedom of my teaching, (un-
fettered, and everywhere the same,) aggrandised
without changing me. Too often they who rise
lose by rising, because they allow themselves to
alter ; they become mongrels, bastards ; they lose
the originality of the class from which they rose,
without gaining that of any other. . . The difficulty
is not to rise, but in rising, to remain oneself.
The rise of the people, their progress, is often,
now-a-days, compared to the invasion of the Bar-
barians. I like the word, I accept the term. . . ,
Barbarians ! yes ! that is to say, full of sa]), fresh,
vigorous, and for ever springing up. Barbarians,
that is to say, travellers towards the Rome of the
future ; proceeding slowly, perhaps, but each gene-
ration advancing a little, then halting in death;
but others go on advancing from the point where
they stopped.
We have, we Barbarians, a great natural advan-
tage; if the upper classes excel us in refinement,
we have much more vital heat. They have neither
the ability to work hard, nor the intensity and
stubbornness of feeling to carry them on; nor do
they make it matter of conscience. Their elegant
writers, spoilt children of the world, seem to glide
among the clouds, or else, haughtily eccentric,
scarce deigning to touch the earth — how then can
they fecundate it ? . This eai'th asks to drink of the
sweat of man's brow, to be impregnated by his
warmth and living virtue. Our Barbarians lavish
all this upon her, and she loves them. They love
too, "not wisely, but too well," giving sometimes
into minutifa, with the holy grotesqueness of Albert
Durer, or tlie too elaborate polish of Jean Jacques,
which does not sufliciently conceal the trick of art,
and by this minuteness of detail compromises the ef-
fect of the whole. We must not be too severe upon
them. Their faults proceed from excess of zeal,
superabundance of sensibility, and often from the
teeming strength of the vital principle, which,
misdirected and perplexed, wrongs itself, striving
to give everything at once — leaves, fruit, and
flowers — till it breaks or distorts the branches.
These defects, common to great workers, are to
be often found in my works, without their other
qualities. It matters not : those who start up
thus with the sap of the people in them, do not the
less introduce into art a new burst of life and
principle of youth ; or at least leave on it the
impress of a great result. They are apt to aim
higher, further than others; consulting their heart
rather than their strength. Be it my share in the
future, not to have attained, but to have marked
the end of history, to have named it by a name
given by no one before me. Thierry called it nar-
ration, and M. Guizot anah/sis. I have named
it resurrection, and it will retain the name.
Were I to review my books, they would meet
with no severer critic than myself. The public
has treated me only too indulgently. Can any one
doubt my seeing the many imperfections of the
present ? . . . Why, then, publish it ? You must
have a great interest in it, or . . .
An interest ? . . , Oh ! much interest ! In the
first place, I shall lose by publishing it many
friends ; in the next, I renounce a life of peace,
which suits my habits, and I drive off" the com-
pletion of my great work, the monument of my
life.
REASONS FOR PUBLISHING THE PRESENT WORK.
" I see: to enter into public life." Never. My
own opinion of myself has long been settled. I
liave neither health nor talent for it; nor the power
of managing my fellow-men.
" Still ; why publish ? " If you must know, I
will tell you.
I speak, because no one would speak for me.
Not but that there are many men more capable
of doing it, but all are embittered and jaundiced
by hates. I — I have ever loved. . . . Perhaps, too,
I am better versed in the antecedents of France;
I have lived in its grand eternal life, and not in
the mere present. I have been more alive to
sympathies and dead to interests; and so can face
the questions of the day with the disinterestedness
of the dead.
Besides, I have suffered more than any one else
from the deplorable divorce which it is attempted
to effect between men, between classes — for I unite
them all in my own person.
The situation of France has become so grave
that I could not hesitate. I am not led away by
any exaggerated notion of the effects a book can
produce; but the question with me is one of duty,
not of ability.
I look, and see France sinking hourly, swallowed
up like one of the Atlantides. Whilst we are dis-
puting, our country disappears.
Who does not see, from east and from west, a
death-like shade oppi'essively overhanging Europe;
that, day by day, we have less sun; that Italy has
perished; that Ireland has perished; that Poland
has perished. . . . And that Germany wishes to
perish ! . . . O Germany, Germany ! . . . .
Were France dying of natural decay, were her
time come, I might, perhaps, resign myself ; 1
might, like a voyager in a sinking ship, close my
eyes on the awful sight, and commit myself to
God. . . . But our situation is nothing of the kind;
and hence my vexation. Our ruin is absurd,
laughable; it is our own doing, ours only. Who
have a literature ? Who are the directors of the
mind of Europe? We; all enfeebled as we ai'e.
Who have an army ? We; we only.
England and Russia, two weak and swollen
giants, impose on Europe — great empires, feeble
peoples! . . . Let France be one for a moment;
she is strong as the world.
The fix'st point to be attended to before the
crisis * comes, is to know ourselves thoroughly,
• A thirty years' peace is unknown in history. The ban-
kers, who foresaw no revolution (not even that of the
"Three Days," which many of them laboured to bring
about), affirm that Europe will remain quiet. Their grand
reason is, that the world findi its advantage in peace. The
world, yes ; not we. The rest run ; we walk. Another
moment, we shall be last in the race. A second reason of
this is, No war without a loan, and we won't advance one.
But if the war begin with a treasure, such as Russia hai
amassed, or pay its own expenses as in Napoleon's time, &c.
and not, as in 1792, and again in 1815, to have to
change our front, our manojuvres, and our system
in presence of the enemy.
The second is to trust to France, and in no de-
gree to Europe.
Here, each goes abroad for his friends t; the
politician to London, the philosopher to Berlin;
the communist says, " Our brothers the Chartists."
The peasant alone has preserved the tradition in
which safety consists; a Prussian is a Prussian to
him, an Englishman an Englishman. His good
sense teaches him right whatever you may say, ye
philanthropists! Prussia, your friend, and Eng-
land, your friend, drank the other day the health
of Waterloo to France.
Children, children, hearken — ascend a mountain,
provided it be lofty enough, look to the four quar-
ters of the globe, you will see only enemies.
Be it your task to come to an undei-standing
with one another. Let us try to make a beginning
among ourselves of that perpetual peace which
some promise you (whilst the arsenals are ringing
with the sound of preparation . . . see the black
smoke over Cronstadt and over Portsmouth).
True, we are divided; but Europe believes us to
be more divided than we really are — and hence,
her presumption. Whatever hard things we
have to say to one another, let us out with them,
let us open our hearts, let us hide none of our ail-
ments, but set about discovering the remedy.
One people ! one country ! one France ! . . .
Never, 1 pray you, let us become two nations.
Without unity, we perish. How is it you see
this not ?
Frenchmen of all conditions, of all classes, re-
member one thing: you have but one sure friend on
this earth — France. In the eyes of the still sub-
sisting coalition of aristocracies, it will ever be a
crime that, fifty years ago, you attempted to give
the world freedom. They have not pardoned that
attempt ; they never will. You are their constant
fear. You may distinguish yourselves from each
other by different party names, but as Frenchmen,
you are condemned by the rest of the world in one
undistinguished mass. Be assured, France will
never bear any but one name in the mind of
Europe ; that inexpiable name, which is also its
true and eternal one — The Revolution.
Jan. Uth, 1846.
t Take a German or Englishman, at random, even the
most liberal; speak to him of liberty, he will rejoin — liberty.
Then get at his meaning of the word. You will find it bears
as many senses as there are nations; that both the German
and English democrat are aristocrats at heart; that, the
barrier of nationalities which you thought swept away, i»
still erect. All those people you believe so near, such close
neighbours, are five hundred leagues off from you.
THE PEOPLE.
PART THE FIRST.
OF SLAVERY AND HATE.
CHAPTER T.
SERVITUDES OF THE PEASANT.
Do we wish to know the fixed idea, the ruling pas-
sion of the French peasant ; we have only to take a
country walk of a Sunday, and follow him. There
he is, yonder before us. It is two o'clock ; his
wife is at vespers ; he is in his Sunday's best. I
warrant you he is going to see his mistress.
What mistress ? His bit of land.
I don't say that he is going straight there. No ;
he is free to-day; can go or not as he likes. Is
he not there often enough of week days ? . . . And,
see, he turns away; he is going elsewhere; he has
business elsewhere. , . . Nay, but he is going
there.
It is true he has to go close by it, and the oppor-
tunity is thrown in his way. He looks at it, but
doesn't seem going into it. What should he do
thex'e to-day ? . . . Sure enough, he does turn into
it.
But he can't be going to work; he has his Sun-
day clothes on, his white shirt and blouse. That
is no reason, however, that he should not pick up
some weed or stone that has no business there.
That stump, too, is in the way; but he has not his
pick with him; it must stay till to-morrow.
So he crosses his arms, and takes a long, serious,
thoughtful look. Long, very long, does he look; he
seems lost in thought. At last, the sudden thought
that he may be watched, or the footstep of a passer-
by, startles him, and he turns away slowly and
lingeringly. Hardly has he gone thirty yards when
he stops, turns round, and fixes on his bit of land
a last look — a deep, gloomy one; but, to a keen
observer, that look is all passion, all heart, all de-
votion.
If this is not love, by what sign do you recognize
it in this world ? Smile not ; it is love. . . . The
land requires this love to make it yield ; without it,
this poor land of France, almost without cattle and
without manure, would give nothing. It yields,
because it is loved.
The land of France belongs to fifteen or twenty
millions of peasants, who cultivate it; the land of
England to an aristocracy of thirty-two thousand in-
dividuals, who get it cultivated *.
The English, not striking the same roots into the
soil, emigrate wherever gain invites. They say,
• And out of these thirty-two thousand, twelve thousand
belong to corporate bodies in Mortmain. If it be objected,
that in England there are nearly three millions of persons
who hold more or less real property (propriile fonciere), it
must be remembered that this term includes, besides land,
houses, and the small plots of ground, court-yards, gardens,
annexed to houses, more especially in the vicinity of manu-
facturing towns.
our country (le pays); we, our native land (la
patrie) ", With us, man and the land are linked
together, and will not sever ; they are lawfully
married, for life and death. The Frenchman has
wedded Finance.
France is a land of equity. In doubtful cases,
she has generally adjudged the land to him who
has tilled it f . England, on the contrary, has de-
cided in favour of the lord, and expelled the peasant;
she is now only cultivated by labourers.
Serious moral difference! Whether a possession
be great or small, it rejoices the heart. The man
who would otherwise be without self-respect,
respects and values himself on account of his little
holding. It is a sentiment which adds to the just
pride born in this people of their incomparable
military renown. Single out at random from that
crowd a working man who owns a twentieth of an
acre, you will not find in him the feelings of
the working man, the hireling ; he is a landowner,
a soldier (he either has been, or will be one
to-morrow); his father was in the grand army.
Small holdings are no novelty in France. It is
erroneously supposed that they are of late date,
the work of one crisis, an accident of the Revolu-
tion. A grand mistake. The Revolution found
them widely spread, and was born of this long
established change. In 1785, an excellent ob-
server, Arthur Young, was surprised and alarmed
at seeing the land so divided here. In 1738, the
abbe de St. Pierre observes, that in France "the
working-class hate almost all a garden on some strip
of a vineyard or of a field X" In 1697, Boisguille-
• Our Anglo-French say pai/s to avoid saying palrie. See
the intelligent and vivid remarks of M. Genin, Des Varia-
tions du Lnngage Francois, p. 417.
t This is one of the intellectual characteristics of our
Revolution, which regarded man and the labour of man as
of inestimable value, not to be put in comparison with the
purse : the land went with the man. In England, on the
contrary, man goes with the land. Even in the non-feudal
provinces, where the Celtic principle of the clan has alone
been in operation, the English lawyers have applied the
feudal principle in its extremest vigour, ruling that the lord
is not only suzerain, but proprietor. Thus, a Scotch county,
exceeding in extent the department of the Upper Rhine,
was adjudged to belong to the duchess-countess of Suther-
land, and it was cleared, in the space of nine years (from
1811 to 1820), of three thousand families, who had been
settled on it since Scotland was Scotland, the duchess offering
a slight indemnification, which many would not accept. I
beg my readers to peruse the account of this splendid transac-
tion, for which we are indebted to the duchess's factor, James
Loch, in his account of the improvements on the Estates of
the Marquis of Stafford (8vo, 1820). An analysis of this pub-
lication is given by M. de Sismondi, in his Etudes d' Eco-
nomic Politique, 1837.
% Saint Pierre, t x. p. 251 (Rotterdam). The authority
of this writer, of little weight, is weighty in this particular, as
he wrote from official information.
LONGING OF THE PEASANT TO OWN LAND.
bert deplores the necessity to which the small pro-
prietors were reduced in Louis Fourteenth's day,
of parting with most of the holdings they had
acquirer" v.;the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Tl>' T-r (,, but little known history, presents
< " reiuarKable feature — in the worst times, in
periods of universal poverty, when the rich become
poor and are forced to sell, the poor find them-
selves enabled to buy. In default of purchasers,
the ragged peasant steps in with his bit of gold,
and becomes possessor of a nook of land.
Strange mystery; this man must have a treasure
concealed somewhere. . . . He has — in his con-
stant labour, sobriety, and frugality. God seems
to have bestowed on this indestructible race, as
their patrimony, the gift of toihng, of fighting, of
doing without food at a pinch, of brave lightness of
heart, of living on hope.
These periods of misfortune in which the pea-
sant has been able to purchase land cheaply, have
always been followed by a sudden and inexplicable
increase of productiveness. About the year 1500,
for instance, when France, exhausted by Louis XL,
seems about to consummate her ruin in Italy, the
nobles who accompany the army are obliged to
sell ; the land, passing into new hands, all at
once teems with plenty ; men work and build.
This moment of prosperity (to speak in the accre-
dited style of monarchical history) is called tlte
good Louis XII.
Unhappily, it is but momentary. Scarcely has
the land been brought into heart before the screw
of taxation is applied; the religious wars follow
and threaten to strip even the very earth * — a
time of fearful misery, of famine in which mothei-s
devour even their own children ! . . . Wlio could
suppose the country would recover ? . . . Neverthe-
less, hardly ai'e the wars over than from these
ravaged fields and black and smoking huts come
forth the peasant's savings. He buys ; in ten
years the face of France is changed; in twenty or
thirty, the land has doubled, tripled its value.
This moment, also baptized with a royal name, is
called the good Henry IV. and the great Richelieu.
Glorious movement! What man is there whose
heart does not respond to it ? Yet, why be ever
stopping, and why are so many efforts all but lost
before they have brought in their reward ? . . . Do
we reflect how much of labour, of sacrifice, of
deadly privation, is compressed in these words —
tlie poor man saves, the peasant buys, these simple
words which fall from our tongue so glibly ?
Tiie perspiration drops from one's forehead when
one watches in detail the diverse accidents, the
successes and reverses of this obstinate struggle;
when we observe the unconquerable strain with
which this miserable man has clutched, let go,
then seized again upon this land of France. , . .
Like the poor shipwrecked mariner who touches
the shore, lays hold of it, is borne seaward by the
receding wave, but struggles back ; and, lacerated,
and grasping the rock with bleeding hands, clings
to it still.
This movement, I must own, relaxed, rather
stopped, about the year 1650. The nobles who
had sold, found a means to buy back again cheaply.
Whilst our Italian ministers, a Mazarin and an
* See Froumenteau, Secret des Finances de France (1581),
and, especially, the Preuves, p. 397, 398.
Emeri, were doubling the taxes, the nobles who
thronged the court easily obtained complete ex-
emption, so that the burden fell doubled right
upon the shoulders of the weak and poor, who
were obliged to sell or give away the properties
of which they had been such brief jiossessors, and
to become once more hirelings, fanners, viitoi^ers,
day-labourers. And by what incredible efiorts
they were able through all the wars and bankrupt-
cies of the grand monarch, and of the regent, to
keep or recover the lands which we have just now
proved to have been theirs in the eighteenth
century, is a fact never yet explained.
I pray and implore our law-makers, or law-ad-
ministrators, to read the details of the fatal re-ac-
tion of Mazarin's time, and that of Louis XIV.,
in the indignant and weeping pages in which they
have been registered by a great citizen, Pesant de
Boisguillebert *. May this history operate as a
warning for them at this moment, when different
influences are emulously striving to stop France in
her chiefest work — the acquisition of land by the
labourer.
Our magistrates, especially, need enlightenment
on this subject, and to arm their consciences there-
on, for they are attacked by craft and guile. The
large proprietors, roused from their apathy by
the lawyers, have lately brought innumerable un-
just actions ; and there has come into i)lay against
the communes and the small holders a special class
of antiquarian pleaders, whose conjoint aim is to
falsify history in order to mislead justice. They
know that the judges have rarely time to examine
their fabrications; and that those whom they pro-
ceed against can seldom show a regular and
formal title. The communes, in particular, have
either been most careless about them, or have
never had any; and precisely because their rights
are of high antiquity, and revert to a period when
tradition was the safeguard of title.
In all frontier districts, especially +, the rights
of the poor ought to be considered the more
sacred, because but for reliance on such rights
none would have peopled these dangerous marches,
the land would have been a desert ; there would
neither have been inhabitants nor cultivation.
And here, at this day, in a time of peace and
security, you come and dispute the right of those
to the land without whom the land would not have
existed! You ask for their title-deeds. They are
buried in the ground; they are the bones of their
forefathers who kept your frontier, and who still
guard the sacred line.
* A great citizen, eloquent writer, and practical man, not
to be confounded with the utopists of the period. The idea
oi the royal tenth is erroneously attributed to him. What
can beholder than the beginning of his Factum? and, at the
same time, what more painful ? 'Tis the deep-drawn sigh of
the agony of France. Boisguillebert published it in March,
1707, though Vaiiban had been proceeded against the month
before for a far less daring work. How is it that no statue
has yet been erected to this heroic man by Rouen, which
gave him a triumphal reception on his return from his
exile? . . . (This work of his has been recently reprinted in
the Collection des Economistes.)
+ Add that, in the middle age, what with the division of
so many provinces, seigniories, and fiefs, which form so many
states, tlie frontier is eviri/tdiere. Even in more recent
times, the English frontier was in the centre of France,
being in Poitou down to the thirteenth, and in Limousin
down to the fourteenth century, &c.
There is more than one district in France in
which the cultivator has a right to the land which
takes precedence of all others — that of having made
it. I do not speak figuratively. Look at those
parched rocks, those arid summits, of the south ;
where, 1 ask you, would the land be without the
man ? The jn-oprietor is there the property ; which
is the work of his untiring arm, which all day long
hammers the flint to dust, and mingles a little soil
with it. The land exists in the strong back of the
vinedresser, ever pushing up from the bottom of
the hill his little plot, which is ever crumbling
down. The land exists in the docility and patient
ardour of the wife and child, who yoke themselves
with their ass to the plough, ... a painful sight,
• . . which nature herself compassionates. From
rock to rock hangs tlie small vine. The chestnut,
sober and hardy plant, strikes root into the flint,
seems to live on air, and, like its master, to thrive
on fasting*.
Yes, man makes the land; a truth applicable
even to the poorest countries. Never must we
forget this, if we would comprehend how much,
how passionately, he loves lier. Let us remember
that for whole ages, generation after generation has
expended upon her the sweat of the living, the
bones of the dead, their savings, their nourishment.
. . . This land, on which man has so long expended
man's better part, his sap and substance, his energy,
his virtue, he feels to be a human land, and he
loves her as if she were a living being.
He loves her. To acquire her he consents to
everything, even to see her no more ; he emigrates,
goes to a distance if it must be, supported by this
thought and recollection. What think you is that
Savoyard eri*and-boy, who is sitting on yon door-
step, thinking of? Of the little field of rye, of the
right of scanty pasture, which, on his return, he
will buy on his mountain. It will take ten years !
No matter f! . . . The Alsacian will sell his life,
and go to die in Africa J, in order to have land in
seven years' time. For a few feet of a vineyard,
the Burgundian woman takes her bosom from her
own child's mouth, and puts a stranger's infant to
it, weaning her own before its time. " Thou
may'st live, may'st die," says the father; "but if
thou livest, my son, thou wilt have land !"
* I felt all this when, in May, 1844, going from Nimes to
the Puy, I crossed Ard^che, that savage district where
all is of man's creation. Nature had made it frightful;
thanks to him, it is lovely, lovely in May, though, even
then, wearing a severe grace which rendered the moral
effect the more touching. It cannot be said that the lord
has given the land to the villein there — there was no land.
What a pang shot through me then ! to see still on the rocky
eminences, those stern, gloomy donjon keeps which levied
tribute so long on so poor and meritorious a race, that owed
nothing but to themselves. My monuments, those which
refreshed my eyes, were the humble huts of flint or stone,
without mortar, in the valleys ; the abode of the peasants.
These houses are gloomy, and wear a desolate look, with
their little ill-watered, indigent, and meagre garden; but
their large, arched entrances, with a flight of noble steps,
set them off. The harvest was at its height,— the silk har-
vest, and this poor district looked rich. Under the sombre
doorway of each house, sat a young spinner, who, whilst
plying her foot busily on the pedal of her spindle, smiled
with her pearly teeth, and span gold.
+ See Leon Faucher's paper. La Colonic des Savoyards A.
Paris, in the Revue des Deux-Mondes, Nov. 1834, t. iv. p. 343.
t See, further on, note, p. 13.
Is not this a hard, almost an impious thing to
say ? . . Think well before you so pronounce it.
" Thou wilt have land;" that means, " Thou wilt
not be a hireling — taken to-day, discharged to-
morrow; thou wilt not have to slave for thy daily
bread, but thou wilt be free !" . . . Free ! great
word, in which is comprised all human dignity: no
virtue without liberty.
Poets have often spoken of the attractions of the
water, of those dangerous fascinations which lured
on the imprudent fisherman. More dangerous, if
possible, is the attraction of the land. Great or
little, there is tliis which is strange and fascinating
in the possession of land — it is ever incomplete, it
always requires rounding. It wants but very little;
only this quarter, or even corner of a field
This is the temptation : to bring your land within
a ring-fence, to buy, to borrow. " Amass, if you
can; borrow not," says reason. But 'tis waiting
so long, and passion calls out, "Borrow!" — His
landlord, a timid, cautious man, is not minded
to lend ; although the peasant shows him a clean
unencumbered plot of ground, he dreads there
starting up out of it (such are our laws) a wife or
ward, whose superior rights will swallow up the
whole value of the pledge. He dares not lend
then. Who will lend ? The usurer of the place,
or the lawyer, who has all the peasant's papers,
who knows his business better than himslf, who
can risk nothing; but who, for friendship, will lend
him ? No ; will contrive to borrow for him at
seven, eight, ten per cent !
Will he take this fatal money ? His wife seldom
counsels him so to do. His grandfather, if con-
sulted, would not advise him. His ancestors, our
old peasantry of France, assuredly would not.
Humble and patient race, they never relied save on
their personal savings, on a sou which they saved out
of their food, on the small coin which at times they
could save on return from market, and which that
very night would go to sleep with its brethren at
the bottom of a jug, buried in the cellar — as is
even yet the custom.
The man of the present day is no longer that
man; he is higher hearted ; he has been a soldier.
The great things which he has done in this age
have accustomed him to think there is no difficulty
in the impossible. The acquiring land is to him a
battle ; he goes to it as to the charge, and will
not retreat. It is his battle of Austerlitz; he will
win it, though there will be tough work, he knows
— he has seen plenty such under him of old, sous
I'Ancien (Napoleon).
If he have fought with a stout heart when there
were only balls to be won, think you that he will
march faintly on in this struggle with the land? Fol-
low him before day-break ; you will find your man at
work, himself, and his little ones, and his wife, who
has just lain-in, and who drags hei-self heavily
along the dank ground. At mid-day, when the
rocks are splitting with the heat and the planter
bids his negro rest, the voluntary negro does not
rest. . . . See his food, and compare it with that
of the workman ; the latter has better every day
than the peasant on Sunday.
This heroic man has believed himself able to
do every thing by the sole grandeur of his will,
even to suppress time. But it is not here as
in war. Time cannot be put down, but weighs
ISOLATION OF THE PEASANT.
11
heavily, and the struggle is protracted between
usury, which time goes on adding to, and his
strength, from which it as surely takes. The land
brings him in two, usury claims eight per cent.; that
is to say, usury fights with the strength of four men
against his single strength. Each year's interest
swallows up four years' labour.
Marvel now, that this Frenchman, this laugher,
this singer of aforetime, is no longer known to
laugh! Marvel, when meeting him on this land
which devours him, you find him so sombre. . . .
You pass, give him a cordial " Good-day;" he
forces his hat over his eyes and won't see you.
Don't ask him your way ; his answer might send
you back the road you came.
And thus the peasant is more and more isolated
and embittered. His heart is too frozen up for
him to open it to any sentiment of goodwill. He
hates the rich; he hates his neighbour and the
world. Alone, on this miserable plot of ground of
his, as much alone as if on a desert island, he
becomes a savage. His insociability, arising from
the very sense of his misery, renders it iri-emedi-
able, and prevents him from coming to an under-
standing with those who ought to be his natural
aids and friends*, his brother peasants; he would
die sooner than advance one step to meet them.
On the other hand, the denizen of the town has no
mind to draw near to this fierce man, and almost
fears him. " The peasant is mischievous, malig-
nant, capable of any thing. . . . You cannot live
among them with any safety." So, people in easy
circumstances become more estranged from them;
they make short visits to the country, but do not
fix permanently there; their dwelling is the town.
They leave the field open to the village banker, to the
lawyer, — the secret confessor of all, who gains by
all. " I will have no more to do with these folk,"
says the proprietor; " the notary will arrange all,
I leave all to him; he will account to me, and must
lease the land as he thinks fit." And thus in
numerous localities the notary becomes the sole
farmer, the only intermediary between the wealthy
proprietor and the labourer. This is a great mis-
fortune for the peasant. To escape from slavish
dependence on the proprietor, who could usually
wait, and who would allow himself to be long put
off with words, he has chosen as his master the
lawyer, the man of money, who will know but one
thing — the time when payment falls due.
The disgust of the proprietor seldom fails to be
excused and justified by the pious personages who
surround his wife. The materialism of the peasant
is the common text of their lamentations. " Un-
godly age," they cry out, " material race ! these
men worship the earth ; it is all their religion !
They adore only the dung of their fields." . . Un-
happy Pharisee, were this earth only earth, they
Would not buy it at so mad a rate; it would not
lure them into such mistakes, or beguile them with
so many illusions. You, spiritual and immaterial
as you are, could not be taken in as they are ; you
can calculate to almost within a franc, how much
such or such a field yields in corn or in wine. But
the peasant swells this out with the riches of
• Further on, I shall speak of the principle of association.
As to the politico-economic advantages and inconveniences
of small farms, see Gasparin, Passy, Dureau Delamalle, &c.
The topic is foreign from my subject.
his imagination ; it is he who is here too much led
away by the mind, it is he who is the poet. In
this foul, low, darkling land, he beholds sparkle the
gold of liberty. Liberty to him who knows the
compulsory vices of the slave, is pufsiUe virtue. A
family that rises from a state of servitude to that of
proprietorship, learns self-respect, is elevated in its
own esteem. An entire change takes place : it
reaps from its plot of ground a harvest of virtues.
Are the sobriety of the father, the economy of the
mother, the devoted labour of the son, the chastity
of the daughter, are all these fruits of liberty, I
ask you, material goods ? are they treasures that
can be too dearly paid for I *
Men of the past, who call yourselves men of
faith, if you are really so, confess that that was a
faith which, in our own days, by the arms of this
very people, defended the liberty of the world
against the world itself. Be not ever speaking, I
beg you, of chivalry. That was a chivalry, and the
proudest of all — that chivalry of our peasant sol-
diers. . . . You say that the Revolution destroyed
the nobles ; it is precisely the reverse : it called
into being thirty-four millions of nobles. . . . An
emigrant was extolling the glories of his ancestors;
a peasant, w ho had gained battles, answered him
with, " I am an ancestor!"
After their great deeds, this people of France is
noble; Europe has remained plebeian. It behoves
us to defend this nobility with intensest earnest-
ness; it is in peril. The peasant, become the serf
of the usurer, would not be miserable only; he would
become tame of heart. A wretched, restless,
trembling debtor, who fears to meet his creditor,
and shrinks into holes and corners; think you such
a man would retain much courage ? And what
would a race of men be, reared in such fashion,
in terror of the Jews, and whose only feelings
should be fear of writs, arrest, and distraining?
Laws must change: the law must submit to this
high political and moral necessity.
Were you Germans or Italians, I would say to
you, " Consult the legists: you have only to follow
the rules of civil equity." — But you are France;
you are not a nation only, you are a principle, a
grand political principle, which must be preserved
at any cost. As principle, you must live. Live for
the salvation of the world.
In the second rank, as regards industry, you
take the first rank in Europe by this vast and
deep legion of peasant proprietary soldiers — the
strongest basis on which any nation has rested
since the Roman empire. It is by this that
France is formidable to the world and able to help
it, too; it is this which the world regards with fear
and hope. What in reality is it ? The army of
the future — the day the barbarians shall come.
One thing gives our enemies confidence; namely,
that this grand nuite France which is undermost,
has been long domineered over by a small, noisy,
♦ Still, the peasant is not let alone. After the priest, the
artist comes to calumniate him, the neo-catholic artist, that
impotent tribe of deplorers of the middle age, who can only
deplore and copy . . . deplorers of stones; for, as to men,
they may die of hunger, for what they care; as if the merit
of these stones did not consist in recalling the men and
bearing their imprint. The peasant, in the eyes of these
men, is only a destroyer. Every old wall that he knocks
down, every stone the ploughshare has shaken, was an in-
comparable ruin.
12
THE PEOPLE.
bustling France. No government, since the Revo-
lution, lias paid attention to the agricultural in-
terest. Manufacture, younger sister of agriculture,
has caused her elder to be forgotten. The Resto-
ration favoured property, but property on a large
scale. Napoleon, even, so dear to the peasant, and
who knew him well, began by suppressing those
imposts which reached the capitalist and spared
the land. He swept away the laws of mortgage
enacted by the Revolution in order to concentrate
the money of the peasant.
At the present day, the capitalist and the manu-
facturer are all in all. Agriculture, which con-
tributes more than one half of our revenue, is
not benefited by more than one hundred and
eighth part of our expenditure! It is treated little
better in theory than in practice; for theory directs
its exclusive attention to manufacture and manu-
facturers. Many of our writers on political
economy absolutely say labourer (travailleur) in-
stead of workman (ouvrier), in their entire forget-
fulness of the twenty-four millions of agricultural
labourers.
And yet the peasant not only constitutes the
largest portion of the nation, but the strongest,
the healthiest, and, both physically and morally,
all to nothing the best *. Unsupported by the
faith which formerly sustained him, left to him-
self, halting betwixt that religion which is no
longer his and the lights of modern philosophy which
are withheld from him, he is yet the depositary
of the national sentiment, the grand military tradi-
tion of his race, still pi'eserves something of the
honour of the soldier. He is selfish and hard to
deal with, no doubt ; but who can rail at this who
knows all that he has to go through ? . , . What-
ever faults may be at times objected to him, com-
pare him, I beseech you, in his daily habits with
your tradesmen, who are lying all day long, to the
mob of the factory.
Man of the earth, and living wholly in her, he
seems made in her image. Like her, he is greedy;
the earth never says, Enough. He is obstinate
even as she is firm and resistive. He is, like her,
patient; like her, indestructible. All passes away;
he remains. . . . Call you these — defects? Of a
truth, had he not had them, France would long
since have been no longer yours.
Would you really know what our peasants are ?
Look at them returned home after their time of
military service is expired ! You will see those
terrible soldiers, tlie first in the world, but just
returned from Africa, from warring on lions,
quietly set down to work between their sisters and
their mothers, resume their father's life of thrift
and self-denial, and war only on themselves. You
will see them peaceably, uncomplainingly, seeking
by the most honourable means to accomplish that
holy work which constitutes the strength of
France — I mean the marriage of man and the
land.
Ail France, had it the true sense of its mission,
would aid those who are continuing this work. By
what fatality is it at this moment doomed to come
to a standstill in their hands f ! . . . Should things
• Two fifths of our yearly statistics of crime are furnished
by the population of our towns, which is only one-fifth part
of that of the entire country.
t Or rather, retrogrades. M. Hipp. Pussy (Mem. Acad.
go on as they are at present, the peasant, far from
being purchaser, would be seller, as was the case
in the middle of the seventeenth century, and would
sink back into the labourer. Two centuries lost !
. . . This would not be the fall of oue class of men
merely, but of the whole country.
They pay more than half a million to the state
yearly ! They pay a million to the usurer ! Is this
all ? No. Indirect taxation — the duties, which,
whilst they keep out foreign products, equally re-
strict the importation of our own — probably ab-
stract from them as much more.
These hard working men, are the worst-fed of
all. Meat is unknown to them. Our breeders
(who in reality are manufacturers), prevent the
agricultui-al labourer from eating it*, in order to
protect agriculture. The lowest handicraftsman eats
white bread ; but he who produces the wheat that
makes it, can only eat black. They make wine, the
towns drink it. What do I say ? The whole world
quaffs joyously the cup of France, save the French
vine-dresser f .
A measure of considerable relief has lately been
extended to our manufacturing towns, but which
throws a greater burthen on the land, at the pre-
cise moment that the humbler manufacture of the
rural districts — that of the " spinster," has been
broken up by the machine for spinning flax.
The peasant, thus losing, one by one, the minor
branches of manufacture which he considered his
own — to-day, flax-spinning, to-morrow, pei'haps,
silk-spinning — finds it next to impossible to keep his
land. It slips out of his hands, and carries away
at once all his years of labour, of thrift, of sacrifice.
He has appropriated his life itself. If anything is
left him, lie is soon stripped of it by adventurers.
He listens, with all the credulity of misfortune, to
the fables they trump up. Algiers teems with
sugar and coffee ; any man in America can earn
Polit ii. 301) asserts, that from 1815 to 1835 the number of
owners of land, compared with the rest of the population,
had decreased by one-fortieth. He takes the census of 1815
for his starting point; but is it to be depended upon? is it
more trustworthy than that of 182G, and the returns of the
progress of the nation in the time of the empire, &c. ? See
Villerme, Journal des Economistes, No. 42, May, 1845.
• And who sell him his only cow and his draught oxen
at so high a price. The breeders say, no farmer without
manure, and no manure without cattle. They are in the
right, but stand in their own way nevertheless. Changing
nothing and improving nothing (except as far as the wants
of luxury and their own petty vanity is concerned), and
keeping up inferior qualities at high prices, they hinder all
the poorer countries from buying the small cattle which
suit them, and so from obtaining the manure tliey require :
thus, both man and land, unable to recruit their strength,
perish of exhaustion.
t Paul-Louis Courrier's calculation recurs to one's mind
here. He calculated that on the whole, an arpent (acre) of
vineyard returned 150 francs to the owner, and 1300 to the
government. This is an exaggeration ; still, we must bear
in mind that this very arpent is burthened with a much
heavier debt than in 1820. Yet is there no occupation
which demands more of the labourer, or in which he better de-
serves his wages. Traverse Burgundy, either in spring or
autumn ; you pass, for forty leagues, through a district
where the land is broken up, turned over, and the vine-
props taken up and laid down again twice a-year. What
labour ! . . . . And all that this produce, which has cost so
much, may be drugged and dishonoured .at Bercy and at
Rouen. An infamous art calumniates nature and good
liquor. The wine is as badly treated as the vine-dresser.
TOWN AND COUNTRY.
13
ten francs a-day. He must cross the sea ; what
matter ? The Alsatian believes them when they
tell him that the ocean is no broader than the
Rhine *.
Before resolving on this step, before quitting
France, every resource must be tried. The son
will sell himselff. The daughter will go into ser-
vice. The younger children will be put to the
neighbouring manufactory. The wife will go out
as nurse into the master's family :J: ; or will take to
• The very words of an Alsatian to one of my friends.
(September, 1845.) — Our Alsatians, on emigrating, sell their
little all : the Jew is ever at hand to purchase. The German
emigrants carry their moveables, if possible, along with
them, and travel in waggons, like the barbarians in the
days of the Roman empire. I recollect in one very hot,
dusty day, in Suabia, meeting with one of these waggons,
piled with the goods of the family. Trailed behind it was
a small child's cart, with an interesting looking little
fellow, about two years of age, perched in it. He was cry-
ing bitterly, and his little sister, who walked by his side, to
take care of him, could not quiet him. Some women ex-
postulated with the parents for their neglect of him, and
the husband made his wife get down and bring him into the
waggon along with them. Both husband and wife seemed
to me utterly beaten down, hardened, dead beforehand of
want, or of grief ? Would they ever reach their destination?
It was unlikely. And the child ; could his frail vehicle last
so long a journey ? I durst not ask myself the question. . .
Only one member of the family appeared to me a living
being, and to hold out a promise of lasting — a boy of four-
teen, who, at this very moment, was locking the wheel pre-
viously to going down a hill. This black-haired lad, with
a physiognomy in which deep-seated feeling and gravity of
character were commingled, seemed full of moral strength
and ardour : at least such was my estimate of him. He
seemed already to feel himself the head of the family, its
providence, and as if charged with its safety. The real
mother was the sister, for she discharged the mother's
office. Ihe little one, crying in his cradle, bore his part
in this domestic drama, and not the least important ; he
was the bond on which the unity of the family depended,
the link that made brother and sister one, their common
nursling. In his little wicker cart, he carried along with
him both their home and their native land ; if he lived,
Suabia would ever be where he was, even in an unknown
world Ah ! how much have these children to do and
to suffer! Contemplating the eldest lad, with his fine,
serious head, I blessed him from the bottom of my heart,
and so endowed him as far as in me lay.
+ These substitutes (for military service) are held too
cheap. M. Vivien, who, as member of a government com-
mission, has instituted inquiries into this subject, did me
the honour to tell me that their motives were often highly
laudable, as to assist their families, help towards the pur-
chase of a bit of land, &c.
I No painter of manners, whether novel-writer or socialist,
has, so far as I am aware, deigned to speak to us of the
nurse. Here, however, is a sad tale to tell, and which is
not sufficiently known. The world is in the dark as to the
traffic made of these poor beings, and how badly used they
are ; in the first place, as regards the vehicles in which they
are dragged up to town (often hut just confined), and, then,
by the office-keepers who piocure them situations. Hired
as nurses on the spot, they are obliged to send their child
home at the risk of its life. Having no formal engagement
with the family that hires them, they may be dismissed at
the first caprice of the mother, of the monthly nurse, or of
the doctor ; and if they lose their milk through change of
air or living, they are dismissed without a farthing's wages.
If kept, they acquit e habits of indulgence, and suffer greatly
on returning to their former way of life. Many of them are
tempted, rather than forego their new habits, totake service,
never go back to their husbands, and so the peace of whole
families is broken up.
nurse the child of the petty shopkeeper, or even
of the workman.
The workman, however little better off he may
be, is an object of envy to the peasant. He who
styles the manufacturer " master" (mon boitrgeois), is
a master to the peasant. The latter sees him walk-
ing out of a Sunday, dressed like a gentleman
{Movsienr). Fixed to the soil, he fancies that a
man who carries his trade about with him, and
works without a thought as to the weather, to
whom frost and hail are all the same, is as free as
the bird. He knows not, or will not see, the slavery
of the mechanic. He judges of him by the young
workman making his tour of France, who earns his
living, and wherewithal to carry him on, wherever
he takes up his temporary abode, then, with his
long journeyman's stick {canne de compfuinonnaqe),
in his hand, and his little bundle, gaily walks off to
some other town, and sings as he walks.
CHAPTER II.
SERVITUDES OF THE WORKMAN DEPENDENT ON MACHINERY,
" How gay the town is, liow melancholy and poor
the country !" Such are the thoughts of the pea-
sant who visits the town of a fete-day. He knows
not that if the country is />oor, the town, with all
its gaiety, is, perhaps, more miserabli:* . This is a
distinction, howevei*, made but by few.
Look of a Sunday at those two crowds which
are crossing each other at the gates of the town,
the crowd of workmen hurrying off to the country,
the crowd of peasants flocking into the town. Im-
mense is the difference betwixt these two appa-
rently analogous movements. The peasant's is not
a simple walk ; he admires all he sees, covets all,
would stay if he could.
Let him have a care. Once quit the country,
you do not easily get back to it. Those who take
service, and come in for a share of their master's
ease and pleasures, never dream of retui'ning to a
life of penury. They who enter manufactories
would wish to return, but find themselves unable.
They are soon enervated, rendered unfit for the
rough labour, the rapid transitions from hot to
cold, of a country life ; the open air would kill
them.
Yet if the town is so engrossing, we should not
be too vehement in our blame, for she does her
utmost to disgust the peasant by her terrible oc-
trois t, and the enormous price of provisions. Be-
sieged by such crowds desirous to enter, she strives
by these means to keep out her assailants. But
nothing checks them. They will force their way
in, either as servant, or workman, as feeders of
machines, or as machines themselves ; reminding
one of those ancient Italian peoples, who, in their
frenzied longing for Rome, sold themselves as
slaves, to become, at a later period, freedmen, or
citizens.
The peasant is undeterred by the complaints of
the workman, or the feai-ful pictures he draws of
Iiis situation. He who can earn but one or two
• A distinction very clearly drawn in the work of the ex-
cellent and much to be regretted M. Buret, Dc la Mi.irre &c.
(18-iO); a work, however, in which too much attention has
been paid to the exaggeration of the English Commissions
of Inquiry.
t Tolls levied at the city-gates.
14
THE PEOPLE.
francs, cannot understand how a man can be ill oft'
who earns his three, four, or five francs a day.
" But fluctuations in trade ? stoppings of the mills ?"
What matter ? He saves out of his poor earnings
in the country ; how much more easily could he
lay by for a rainy day out of the large wages of
the town !
And, putting gain aside, a town life is an easier
one. You work there, for the most part, under
shelter : to have a roof over one's head seems a
great improvement. Not to speak of the heat, the
cold of our climate is a source of positive suffering
even to those most accustomed to it. 1 have,
myself, passed many a winter without fire, with-
out, however, being a whit more insensible to the
cold. On the coming on of a thaw, I have felt a
sensation of delight with which few enjoyments
can compare. Wlien spring came, I was in ecstasy.
The changes of the seasons, of little moment to the
affluent, constitute the main part of the poor man's
life, — they are his events.
In respect of food, the peasant gains by entering
the town ; if not more healthy, it is more savoury.
During the first few months, it is not uncommon
to find that he will thrive and gain flesh. As a
set-off, his complexion changes, and not for the
better. He has lost, in being transplanted, one
most vital and most nutritive ingredient, which
alone is sufficient to account for the field-labourer's
remaining strong on food little calculated to keep
up his strength, — free air, pure air, constantly re-
freshed and renewed by vegetable ai-oma. I do
not believe the air of towns to be as unhealthy as
is said ; but it assuredly is so in the miserable
dwellings in which our poorer woi-kmen are huddled
together of a night amongst prostitutes and thieves.
This has never been taken into the peasant's
account. Nor has he taken into account that, whilst
earning more in the town, he loses his treasure — that
is, his sobriety, his thrift, or, to be plain, his avarice.
When out of temptation's way, it is easy to put by;
and, moi'e especially, when putting by is the only
pleasure at hand. But how difficult it is, what
strength of mind does it not require, what self-
command, to keep one's money prisoner, and one's
pocket sealed up, when all around urge to open it !
The savings' bank, too, which takes care of money
you do not see, presents by no means the charm of
the treasure which the peasant buries and digs up
with so many conflicting emotions of mystery and
fear ; still less does it wear the charm of a pretty
plot of ground, which always greets the sight, in-
vites the hand, and is constantly urging you to add
to it.
Of a certainty, great must be the workman's
virtue if he can lay by ; if he is a good, easy
tempered fellow who can be led away by his com-
rades, he is beguiled into a thousand shifting ex-
penses from the public-house to worse. If he is
sedate, orderly, and takes a wife to himself at some
happy moment of steady work, she can at the first
add but very little to the common stock, and this
little, when she begins to have a family, dwindles
to nothing. Her husband, who was comfortably
off whilst single, knows not how to make head
against the fixed and overwhelming expenses which
recur daily.
lu addition to the droits d'entrce *, there was,
* Equivalent to octrois : see the preceding note.
formerly, another bari'ier which kept the peasant
out of the town, and hindered him fi-om turning
workman, this was the impossibility of entering
any trade without serving a long apprenticeship, —
the spirit of exclusiveness kept up by companies
and corporations. Mechanics took few apprentices,
and these, for the most part, out of each other's
families. At the present day, new ti'ades have
sprung up which requii-e little apprenticeship, and
welcome every comer. In these trades the real
workman is the machine : the man requires
neither much strength nor skill ; his sole business
is to watch and help this workman of iron.
The number of this wretched portion of our po-
pulation enslaved to machines, amounts to rather
more than four hundred thousand souls *, — about a
fifteenth part of our working class. All who can
do nothing else, take to the tending of machines ;
and, in proportion to their number, their wages
lower, and their wretchedness increases. On the
other hand, articles, thus cheaply manufactured,
are brought within the reach of the poor ; so that
the misery of the machine-workman lessens in some
degree the misery of the workmen and peasants,
• Those writers who put the number down at a higher
figure include workmen employed, it is true, in manufac-
tures in which machines are used, but who have nothing to
do with tending the macliines. Those employed in the
latter task are, and ever will be, an exception. — Is the ex-
tension of machinism (to express the system by one word) to
be feared ? Will machinery usurp every thing ? Will France
become, in this respect, an England? To these grave ques-
tions I answer unhesitatingly, No. We must not judge of
the extension of this system by the epoch of the great Euro-
pean war, when it was called into unnatural activity by
monstrous gains unknown to the usual course of commerce.
Eminently calculated to lower the price of objects which
ought to be brought wiihin the reach of all classes, it has
supplied an immense want, that of the lower classes, who,
during a time of rapid ascent in the world, have wished all
at once to acquire the comfortable, and even the brilliant,
but content themselves with objects of mediocre brilliancy,
often, a vulgar one — m&Aeby the dozen a&vie say. Although,
by extraordinary exertions, machinery has been brought to
produce objects of surprising beauty ; these objects, manu-
factured in the gross and by uniform methods, are impress-
ed irremediably with a character of monotony, which is
made more evident as taste improves, and which becomes
wearisome. An irregular piece of work, produced by hand,
will often charm eye and mind more than such irreproach-
ably exact master-pieces of machinery, which, by the ab-
sence of life, remind one of the uniformity of the metal
which was their father and of their mother steam.
We should also bear in mind, that every one now does not
wish to belong to such or such a class, but to be such a man,
to be himself alone : consequently, he will be inclined to set
less value on products manufactured by classes, and pos-
sessing no individuality answerable to his own. This is a
road which the world inclines to pursue ; each man seeks,
whilst arriving at a more exact appreciation of the general,
to present a marked individual character. It is exceedingly
probable that, all other things remaining equal, men will
prefer to the uniform fabric of machinery the ever-varied
productions which bear the impress of human personality,
and which to reach man, and change as he changes, must
be man's own and sole work. In this is the true future of
the manufacturing industry of France, much more than in
the extension of machinism, in which she must ever remain
inferior. However, the two systems mutually assist one
another. The more man's first wants shall be cheaply satis-
fied by machines, the more will taste rise beyond the pro-
ducts of machinery, and call for those of entirely personal
art.
DEBASEMENT OF A FACTORY LIFE.
If
who are, probably, about seventy times the more
numerous.
We had experience of this in 1842. The cotton
mills were at the last gasp ; the warehouses full to
bursting, and no sale. The terrified manufacturer
neither dared work nor stop with these devtmi'ing
machines of his, — interest on the money he has
borrowed does not stop. He kept his mills going
half-days, and heaped goods on goods. Prices fell;
to no purpose. They went on falling, until cotton
fell to three-pence a yard A miracle followed.
That one word three-pence operated like an " Open,
Sesame." Millions of purchasers, of poor folk who
never bought, started up. It was then found how
immense a consumer the pe()ple is when set a
going. The warehouses were emptied as if by
magic. The machines went to work like furies,
tiie chimneys vomited smoke. ... It was a Revo-
lution in France, hardly noted, but still a great
one ; a revolution in the cleanliness and embellish-
ment of the dwellings of the poor — body-linen, bed-
linen, table-linen, window-curtains : whole classes
acquired these things, that had never before known
what they were since the beginning of the world.
There needs no other example to make all this
clear. Machinery, which, by the centralization of
capital that it requires, seems to be a thoroughly
aristocratic power, is, nevertheless, by the cheap-
ness which it generates, and the vulgarization of its
products, a most powerful agent of democratic pro-
gress, bringing within the reach of the poor nu-
merous objects of utility, and even of luxury and
art, which they could not before look at. Wool,
thanks to God, has come down to the people uni-
versally, to keep them warm. They are already
compassing the ornament of silk. But the great
and capital revolution has been in cotton. The
combined efforts of science and of art have been
required to force this stubborn and rebellious tissue
to undergo daily so many brilliant transfoimations,
and, so transformed, to spread it every where, and
set it within reach of the poor. Every woman
formerly wore a blue or black gown, which she
kept ten years without washing, for fear of its
going to pieces. Now-a-days her husband, a poor
workman, can, at the cost of a day's labour, array
her in a robe of flowers. This vast concourse of
females, who exhibit on our public walks all the
dazzling colours of the iris, formerly presented
one uniform black.
These changes, which are looked upon as frivo-
lous, are of vast signification. They are not mere
material ameliorations, but an inmiense advance
made by the people in those externals by which
men estimate each other ; they have produced, so
to speak, a risible equality. Hence, too, new ideas,
to which, otherwise, the people would never have
soared ; fashions and taste are their initiation into
the world of art. And, moreover, gravest con-
sideration of all, dress imposes on its wearers,
decent clothing inspires, decent habits ; and moral
worth often keeps pace with the outward appear-
ance.
And it requires this general advance and evident
improvement of the masses, to reconcile us to the
hard condition on which we must purchase it, — that
of having, in the midst of a population of men, a
miserable, stunted population of men-machines,
who enjoy but half an existence ; who produce
marvellous things, but who do not re-produce
themselves ; who beget only for the grave ; and
who only perpetuate themselves by incessantly ab-
sorbing other populations, which are being swal-
lowed up in tlieni.
By creating machines to have created creators,
— mighty workmen that invariably pursue the work
to which they have been once set, — was a great
temptation to human pride. But, on the other
hand, what a humiliation to see man, by the side
of the machine, sunk so low ! . . . One's head turns
and heai-t is chilled when, for the first time taken
over those fairy-houses, where the polished and
dazzling engines of iron and copper seem to think,
to will, and work of themselves, whilst man, pale
and weak, is the lowly servant of these iron giants.
" Look," said a manufactui-er to me, " look at this
ingenious and powerful machine, which lakes in
filthy rags, and compelling them to pass, without
ever committing a mistake, through the most com-
plicated transformations, yields them up in tissues
as beautiful as the finest Veronese silks." I looked
and admired, but with feelings of pain ; for 1 could
not help seeing, at the same time, the care-worn
looks of the men, those faded girls, those deformed
children, the slaves of the machine.
Many sensible persons, to escape compunction,
still the voice of pity within them by jumping to
tiie conclusion, that the phjsical debasement of this
wretched class is the result of its own radical cor-
ruption ; and commonly form their opinions by
what meets the eye at the worst moment, — the
hour at which the mills shut. The long ])ent-up
inmates rusli noisily out ; the men speaking so
loud, that you fancy they are quarrelling ; the girls
calling out to each other, with voices alternately
shrill and hoarse ; the children fighting or throw-
ing stones ; the whole presenting a scene of appa-
rent violence. The sight is not a ])leasant one ;
the passer-by shrinks from it, and, if a lady, turns
into another street, fancying there is a riot.
But you must not shrink. You must enter the
mill during the hours of work, and you will under-
stand how needful are all this noise, bustle, and
uproar at the hour of closing, to re-establish the
vital equilibrium lost during so many long hours of
painful labour and obliged silence. This is espe-
cially true of the spinning and weaving mills, —
true hells of weariness. Erer, erer, ever, is the un-
varied word thundered in your ear by the auto-
matic vibration that makes the floors tremble. You
can never get accustomed to it ; your weariness,
giddiness, disgust, are the same at the end of twenty
years as at that of the first day. Does the heart
of this crowd beat ? Very little ; its action is sus-
pended, as it were. It seems as if, during these
tedious hours, another heart, common to all, has
usurped its place, a heart of iron, indifferent and
pitiless ; and that this loud noise, which stuns with
its regularity, is only its beatings.
The weaver's solitary work was far less distress-
ing. Why ? He was free to dream. The machine
suffers no reserve nor absence of mind. Would
you slacken its movement for a moment, you can-
not ; as you are sure it would only be to liave it
accelerated the moment after. Hardly is the in-
defatigable fly-frame with its hundred S|iindles
thrown off than it comes back to you. The hand-
loom weaver can prosecute liis work slowly or
quickly, just as lie respires slowly or quickly; his
work keeps pace with his animal economy, and the
16
THE PEOPLE,
loom conforms itself to the man. In power-loom
weaving, on tlie contrary, the man must conform
himself to the loom, the being of flesh and blood in
whom life varies with the hours must adopt the in-
variableness of this thing of steel.
In those manual labours which depend on our-
selves, it often happens that our meditations
identify themselves with our own work and
elevate it to their own level, so that the inert
instrument which we ply, far from being an
obstacle to the intellectual process, becomes its
help and companion. The rustic weavers of the
middle-age were celebrated under the name of
lollards, because, whilst working, they lolled ; that
is to say, sang in an under tone, or in mind at
least, some merry rhyme. The rhythm of the
shuttle, thrown and returning at equal intervals,
chimed in with the rhythm of the heart. By
evening, he would often find that, along with his
web, he had woven a hymn or a " complaint " in
the same ever-recurring rhyme.
What a change for him who is forced to quit
domestic labour for that of the manufactory ! To
quit one's poor home, one's worm-eaten chairs and
tables, to all of which some family recollection is
attached, is hard; but harder still to renounce the
liberty of one's soul. The vast, white-washed, new
looking rooms of the mill, flooded with light, hurt
the eye accustomed to the shadows of a lowly roof.
No deep obscure here into which the thoughts can
plunge; no sombre corner where the fancy can
build up its dreams; no possible illusion when sur-
rounded by a broad daylight which will not let
you escape from stern reality. We need not be
surprised that our weavers of Rouen * and French
weavers of London so long struggled courageously
and with stoical endurance against the hard neces-
sity of such a change, preferring to starve and die;
but at least to die in their own home. Long did
they struggle with man's weak arm, an arm emaci-
ated by hunger, against those terrible Briareuses,
which, urged by steam, ply night and day a thou-
sand ai-ms at once : at each improvement of the
power-loom, its hapless rival had to increase his
labour, lessen his food. Our colony of weavers at
London has become gradually extinct — poor, but
honest beings, of innocent and resigned lives,
whom want and hunger never tempted into crime!
In their wretched Spitalfields they cultivated flowers
with skill, and the Londoner loved to visit them.
I adverted just now to the Flemish weavers of
the middle-age, the Lollards, the Beghards as they
were called. The Church, by which they were
often persecuted as heretic, could never reproach
them, save with one thing — lore ; an exalted and
subtle love for the invisible lover, for God; some-
times, a vulgar love, under the forms it takes in
the populous centres of manufacture — vulgar, yet
mystical, teaching for doctrine a more than fra-
ternal community, which was to realize a sensual
paradise here below.
This tendency to sensualism remains the same
at the present day, without being exalted by the
poetic reveries of the former time. An English
puritan who has, in our own day, drawn a de-
lightful picture of the happiness which the factory
• The testament of the weaveis of Rouen is the remark-
able little work written by one of themselves, Noiret, Me-
moires d'un Oiivrier Ruuennais, 1836. He asserts that they
take no more apprentices.
operative enjoys, confesses that the flesh is heated
and rebels from the peculiar life he leads. This is
not occasioned solely by the circumstance of the
two sexes being thrown together, the high temper-
ature, &c., but it depends on a moral cause. It is
precisely because the manufactory is a world of
iron, where man sees all around him only the
hardness and chill of the metal, that he draws
closer to woman in his hours of respite from work.
The factory is the reign of necessity, of fatalism.
The severity of the overseer is the only living thing
allowed to enter ; punishment is frequent, reward
unknown. Man feels himself there so little man,
that as soon as out of this prison-house, he must
[lerforce eagerly seek after the liveliest exaltation
of human faculties, that which concentrates the
sense of vastest liberty in the brief moment of a
splendid dream. This exaltation is intoxication;
and, especially, that of love.
Unhappily, the weariness and monotony from
which these captives feel a necessity for escaping,
render them in all things which they are free to
choose incapable of fixity and eager for change.
Love, ever changing its object, is no longer love,
but debauchery. The remedy is worse than the
disease. Enervated by the slavery of labour, they
are rendered worse so by their abuse of freedom.
Physical weakness, moral impotence. The sense
of impotence is one of the greatest miseries of
their condition. This man, so weak in presence
of the machine, and who follows its every move-
ment, is dependent on the mill-owner, and still
more dependent on a thousand unknown causes,
which may at any moment stop his work and
deprive him of bread. The ancient weavers, who,
however, were not like those of the present day
the slaves of the machine, humbly recognized
this impotence. It was their creed. They took
as their text, "God can do all, man nothing."
The true name for this class is that which Italy
first gave them in the middle age — Huviiliati*.
Our weavers do not so easily I'esign themselves.
Sprung from warlike races, they are making in-
cessant efforts to elevate themselves : they would
remain-men. They seek, as much as they can, for
fictitious energy in wine. Does it take a great
quantity to make one drunk ? Watch, if you can
overcome your disgust, in the public-house. You
will see that a man in ordinary health, drinking
unadulterated wine, could drink much more with-
out any inconvenience. But for him who does not
drink wine regularly every day, who comes jaded
and enei'vated out of the atmosphere of the factory
* I have often, in my lectures and writings, sketched the
history of manufactures (especially in the fifth volume of my
History of France). To comprehend it, however, we should
trace it still higher up, and not begin to contemplate
it, as is commonly done, in those great and powerful cor-
porate bodies which lord it even over the city. We should
take the operative when he first started into existence,
despised as he was at the beginning, when the primitive
inhabitant of the town, the landowner of the banlieue (the
liberty of the town), and even the shopkeeper who had hall,
bell, and rights of justice there, joined together to oppress
the operative, the blue nail as they called him; when the
citizen hardly deigned to allow him to live outside the city,
under the shadow of its walls, between two enclosures
(pfahlbiirff) ; when he was debarred all justice unless he
could pay the imposts laid upon him ; when, with fantas-
tic arbitrariness, he was bound to a certain tariff for his goods,
so much to the rich, so much to ihe poor, i'c.
THE CHILD OF THE MILL : THE CHILD OF THE COUNTRY.
17
and drinks, under the name of wine, a wretched
alcoholic compound, drunkenness is inevitable.
We must seek for the causes of their vices then in
their state of extreme physical dependence, in the
calls of that life of mere instinct which contribute
still more to this dependence, in their moral power-
lessness and emptiness of mind ; and not, as is
now done, in external causes; as, for instance, in
the fact of a crowd of different sexes being con-
centrated in the same spot, as if human nature
were so evil that the being thrown together was
quite enough for moral contamination. But this
fine idea set our philanthropists all in a hurry to
work to isolate their fellow-creatures, and to wall
them up if they can : they think their only chance
of preserving or curing the moral man is to build
him a tomb.
This crowd is not evil of itself. Its disorders
spring mostly from its condition, from its sub-
jection to mechanical order, which, for living
bodies, is itself a disorder, a death ; and which, for
this very reason, provokes, in these rare moments
of freedom, to violent returns to life. If anything
resembles fatality, it is this. How hardly, almost
unconquerably, does this fatality weigh upon
women and children ? Woman, whom one pities
least, is, pei-haps, most to be pitied. She is a
double slave ; the slave of work, she gains so
little by it, that the unfortunate being must also
make a gain of her youth and beauty. When
old, what becomes of her ? . . . Nature has enacted
one law with regard to woman ; that she cannot
live except supported by man.
In the height of the great duel between England
and France, when the English manufactui'ers
represented to Mr. Pitt, that the rise in the rate
of wages incapacitated them from paying the
taxes, he pronounced the ten-ible words, " Take
the children." Those words weigh heavily upon
England as a curse. Ever since that hour, the
race of its men has been deteriorating. This
people, heretofoi-e so athletic, is growing nerveless
and enfeebled. What has become of that vivid-
ness and freshness of complexion which was so
great a charm of English youth ? . . . Faded, sul-
lied. They listened to Mr. Pitt — they took the
children.
Let us profit by this lesson. The future is
the question, and here the law ought to have
more foresight than the father. In default of a
mother, the child ought to find a mother in his
country. She must open the school to him as an
asylum, a shelter, a protection from the factory.
Emptiness of mind, we have just said, the ab-
sence of all intellectual interest, is one of the
principal causes of the debasement of the manu-
factory operative. Work which requires neither
strength nor skill, and never tasks the thought !
Nothing, nothing, always nothing ! ... No raoi-al
force can support the strain. Schooling ought to
give to the youthful mind, which such occupation
can never elevate, some high and generous idea
that may recur to it in these long empty days of
work, and help to sustain their weariness.
In the present state of things, schools, so
organized as to create weariness, can only add
fatigue to fatigue. The evening-schools ai-e, for
the most part, a mockery. Fancy these poor
little ones, who, having gone to their work before
daybreak, return wet and weary to their homes
one and two leagues from Mulhausen, slipping and
stumbling, Janthorn in hand, along the muddy
paths of De'ville— called to go into school and begin
their lessons !
Whatever the miseries of the peasant, there is
this difference between them and those of which
we are speaking, this terrible difference, which
has not a mere accidental influence on the indi-
vidual, but wliich exercises a deep and lasting
influence on the class generally, and which may be
summed up in one word — in the country the child
is happy.
Almost naked, without sabots, and with a bit of
black bread for all his food, herding a cow or
watching geese, he lives in the open air and sports
about. The agricultural labours, to which he is
gradually inured, contribute to strengthen him.
Those precious years, in which the body and
powers of man are formed for ever, he spends
in the enjoyment of great freedom, and amidst
the genial influences of home. Farewell, now ;
thou art strong, whatever thou hast to do or suffer,
thou canst make head against life.
At a later period the peasant may be miserable,
dependent, perhaps ; but he has, at the outset,
gained from twelve to fifteen years of freedom.
This alone makes an immense difference in his
favour in the balance of happiness.
The manufactory operative bears about with him
through life a most heavy burthen, the bui'then
of childhood, which has from an early hour en-
feebled, and most commonly corrupted him. He
is inferior to the peasant in physical strength, infe-
rior in regularity of conduct. And, with all this,
there is one thing that pleads for him, he is more
sociable and gentle. The most wretched amongst
them, in their extremest wants, have abstained
from all acts of violence ; they have waited pa-
tiently and resigned, though dying of hungei*.
The author of the latest inquiry* into their condi-
tion, of our times, a steady, cool observer, who will
not be suspected of any enthusiasm, bears the fol-
lowing grave testimony in favour of this class of
men, whose vices he makes no attempt to dis-
semble. " I know of but one vii-tue only which
our operatives possess in a higher degree than
other classes of the community in happier circum-
stances, namely, a natural disposition to aid and
assist one another, whatever the kind of help re-
quired."
I know not that they can claim this superiority
* Villerme, Tableau de I'Elai Physique etl Moral] des
Ouvriers des Manufactures de Colon, &c. (Picture of the
Condition, Moral and Physical, of those employed in the
Cotton Manufacture, &c.) 1840. In 1839, when the dulness
of trade was such, as to compel the manufacturer to part
with all but his oldest hands, the men petitioned that the
work and pay might be divided amongst them all, so that
none might be turned off. See t. ii. p. 71, atid, also, pp. 39,
113, as well as t. i. pp. 89, and 366—369. Many of them,
who live in a state of concubinage, would, it is stated,
marry, had they the money and the necessary documents,
t. i. p. 54, and t. ii. p. 283. (Compare Fregier, ii. 160.) To
the assertions of those who contend that the manufactory
operative earns enough, were he only to make a good use
of his earnings, we oppose M. Villerme's judicious remark
(t. ii. p. 14), that four conditions are indispensable to his
earning a sufficiency, namely — that he be always well,
constantly employed, have no more than two children at
the outside, and be free from all vicious habits : four con-
ditions rarely met with.
18
THE PEOPLE.
only ;' but how great it is ! — That they should be
the least happy, yet most charitable ! — That they
should preserve themselves from the induration so
natural to misery ! — That, in the midst of this out-
ward slavery, they should keep a heart free from
hatred, that tltey should love more ! . . . Ah ! that is a
great glory, and which, undoubtedly, raises the
man, one concludes to be degraded, high indeed, in
the sight of God.
CHAPTER III.
SERVITUDES OP THE WORKMAN.
The child who quits manufactures and tending
machinery to apprentice himself to a master,
certainly ascends in the industrial scale ; more is
required of his hands and his mind. His life is no
longer an accessory to a movement without life ;
he will act himself, he will be really a workman.
Here we see advance in intelligence, advance in
suffering. The machine was regulated, and the
man is not". It was impassible, without caprice,
wrath, brutality. Besides, it left the child at li-
berty at a stated hour ; at least, he rested at night.
But the apprentice of the little master-manfaeturer
belongs night and day to his master. His hours of
work are only limited by the orders that come in.
He has not only his work, but, over and above, all
the slavery of the servant ; besides his master's
caprices, he has to endure all those of the family :
all the vexatious of husband or of wife are pretty
sure to rebound on his shoulders. A failure takes
place — the apprentice is beaten ; the master comes
home drunk— the apprentice is beaten ; whether
work fails, or whether it comes in too fast, . . .
he is equally beaten.
The foregoing was the ancient order of things
in all hnndicrafts ; it was, in fact, slavery. In the
apprentice's indentures, the master becomes a
father, but it is in Si)lomon's sense — " Spare the
rod and spoil the child." As early as the thir-
teenth century, we find the civil power obliged to
interfere to moderate this paternity.
And there was not severity aud violence from
the master to the apprentice only ; in those trades
in which the hierarchy was complicated (in which
there were various stages), the blows went on in
regularly increasing progi-ession. The names
given in certain trade-corporations, prove the fact.
The journeyman is wolf; harassed by the ape, who
is the master, he gives chase to the fox, the youth
on trial, who pays it back, with usury, to the rabbit,
the poor apprentice.
For the privilege of being ill-treated and beaten
ten yeara following, the apprentice behoved to
pay ; and he paid at each stage he was allowed to
mount in the course of this rude initiation. And,
at tiie last, after he had worn out the rope as ap-
prentice, and the stick as knave (^valet), he had to
• M. Leon Fancher has defined these differences ad-
mirably, in his article on the Travail des Enfans de Paris,
(Labour of the Children of Paris), in the Revue des Deux-
Mondes, November 15th, 1844. See also, as regards ap-
prenticeship to the small master manufacturers, the second
volume of his Etudes sur VAngleterre (Studies of England) ;
where the able economist also stands forth as a writer of ihe
first rank, and reveals to us, beyond the hell of manufactures,
another hell but little dreamt of.
submit to trial by a corporation interested in not
increasing its numbers, and might be turned back,
or refused admission, without appeal.
Now-a-days, the doors are thrown open. Ap-
prenticeship is less long, if not less severe. Ap-
prentices are only too readily taken. The misera-
ble profit made upon them (to the gain of the
master, father, or the body of the trade), is a con-
stant temptation to take fresh ones, and to increase
the number of workmen beyond the demand for
them.
The workman of former days, admitted with
difficulty one of a small body, and thence enjoying
a sort of monopoly, had none of the anxiety that
besets his descendant. His gains were far less*,
but he seldom lacked work. Gay and active, free-
man of his craft, he was a great traveller. Where-
soever he found work, there he stopped. His
master generally lodged him, sometimes boarded —
a frugal and light board. At night, after eating
his bit of dry bread, he crept up to his garret, un-
der the leads, and went contentedly to sleep.
How many changes have taken place in his con-
dition, now that his apprenticeship is over ; for
good or for evil ! Improvement in his material
condition, accompanied with fluctuations, anxieties,
and a deepening obscurity over the future ! — a
thousand new elements of moral suffering !
To sum up these changes — he is now a man.
To be a man, in the true sense of the word, is,
in the first place, to have a woman. The work-
man, who seldom married formerly, is often a mar-
ried man in the present day. Married or not, he
generally finds, on returning from his daily work,
a wife at home. A home — a fireside — a wife. Oh I
life is transfigured !
A wife, a family, by and by, children ! Ex-
pense, misery ! ... if work fail ?
• We have adverted above (p. 17) to the wages of the manu-
factory operatives. If we desire to study wages in general,
we shall find this much disputed question is reducible to
this — according to some, wages hare risen, and they are
right, because they begin their data with the year 1789, or
some remoter period; according to others, wof/e* hare tint
risen, and they are in the right, because they start from the
year 1824, since which time the manufactory operative earns
less ; and others have only enjoyed a deceptive rise. The
value of money being changed, he who earns now the same
that he earned then, receives in reality one-third less; so
that he who then earned, and who still earns, three francs,
receives now hardly the value of two; add to this that
wants accumulate wiih the progress of ideas, and that he is
distressed by the absence of innumerable comforts which
were at the previous period unknown to him. Wa^es are
very high in France, compared with Switzerland and Ger-
many ; but, with us, wants are more keenly felt. The mean
of the wages paid in Paris, which is estimated both by M. L.
Faucher and M. L. Blanc at three francs and a half a day,
is sufficient for tlie single man, but far below the require-
ments of the married man with a family. The following is
the general mean of wages in France, a> estimated by various
authorities since Louis Fourteenth's time ; but I doubt the
possibility of fixing a mean with such varied elements : —
1698 (Vauban) 12 sous.
1738 (St. Pierre) 16 ,,
1788 (A. Young) ly „
1819 (Chaptal) 25 ,,
1832 (Morogue) 30 „
I840(Villcrme) 40 „
These calculations only relate to wages in towns ; in the
country their rise has been very inconsiderable.
MATERNAL AMBITION.
19
It is touching to observe, of an evening, this la-
borious multitude hurrying, with long strides,
homewards. What legs has this man after the
toilsome day passed, j)€rhaps a league from his
home, after his lonely breakfast and dinner, and
who has been fifteen hours on his feet ; — what legs
of a niglit ! — He flies to his rest — To be a man an
hour in the course of the day is not asking too
much.
Holy trait ! He brings food home, and the mo-
ment he reaches it, is still, is no more anything,
but gives himself up, like a child, to the wife.
She looks after his food and clothing, and both
tend the child, who does nothing, who is free, who
is master. . . That the last should be first is, in-
deed, the city of God.
The rich man never feels this gi-and enjoyment,
this supremest of man's blessings, the delight of
supporting his family daily with the best part of
his life, with the labour of his own hands. The
poor man alone knows what it is to be a father ;
each day, as it were, he creates and renews his own.
This glorious mystery is appreciated by the wife
better than by all the sages in the world. She is
blessed in owing all to her husband. This fact
alone thi'ows a singular charm over the home of
the poor. Here, nothing is alien fi'om, or indif-
ferent to it ; evei'ything bears the impress of a
loved hand, is stamped with the seal of the heart.
The husband is generally ignorant of the priva-
tions which have been submitted to, that he may
find his modest dwelling set off. Great is the
wife's ambition for furniture, clothing, linen. The
latter article is a novelty. The linen chest, which
is the pride of the rural housewife, was unknown
even to the wife of the operative of the towns,
before the revolution of the manufacturing world,
which I have spoken of above. Cleanliness, pu-
rity, modesty, feminine graces, rendered home an
enchanted spot ; the bed was enshrined in curtains,
the infant's cradle arrayed in dazzling white,
seemed paradise ; the whole was cut out, sewn
and up, at the expense of a few evenings' busier
work than usual And say, besides, a flower
in the window What a surprise 1 The hus-
band, on his return, no longer knows his own house.
Should we regret this taste for flowei's which
now is so widely spread (we have many flower-mar-
kets now in Paris), these minor expenses for the
ornament of the home, when it never can be
safely said, that there will be work for the morrow ?
Call them not expenses, say economy rather. Great
is the thrift, indeed, if these innocent blandish-
ments of the wife can add fresh charms to home,
and keep her husband there. Let us set off", I
pray, both home and wife. A few yards of cotton
make another woman of her, and she becomes
young and blooming again.
"Stay, I beg thee." 'Tis Saturday night; she
throws her arms about his neck, and saves for her
children the loaf he was about to spend *.
Sunday comes, and the wife is victor. The hus-
band, shaved and shifted, puts on a good, comfort-
able coat. This is soon done. The long business,
* Bread ! the landlord ! Two thoughts which never quit
the wife's mind. How much address, virtue, and strength
of soul does it not often require to scrape together and save
the rent ! Who can ever know all the wife does and suffers
to accomplish this one end ?
the serious work of the morning is with the child ;
to dress the little one out for the day is a matter of
weighty consideration. At last, the family party
is off", and its hope trots on before, under the mo-
ther's eye ; let him beware of spoiling that master-
piece of taste and care, his Sunday's dress.
Scan the party closely, and reflect; however high
you may seek, you will find nothing morally supe-
rior. That woman is virtue ; and endowed be-
yond with a peculiar charm of simple reason and
address, enabling her to govern strength without
the latter's being conscious of it. That man is the
strong, the patient, the stout-hearted, who supports,
for the general welfare of the community, the
greatest weight that can be laid on human life.
True companion of duty (fine title of fraternity), he
has stood firm and steady, like a soldier at his post.
The more dangerous his trade is, the surer is his
moral conduct. A celebrated architect, who rose
from the ranks of the people, and knew them
thoroughly, said one day, to a friend of mine, " The
best men 1 have ever known, were of this class.
They know, when they leave their homes of a
morning, that they may never return, and hold
themselves ever ready to appear before God *."
Such a calling. ' however noble it may be, is
nevertheless not that which a mother covets for
her son. And her son is full of promise ; he
will rise in the world. The Freres-f praise him,
and load him with caresses. His drawings and
Christmas pieces already adorn the walls, hung
between Napoleon and the Sacr^-Coeur J. He must
certain!)' be sent to the free- school of design. The
father asks why ? Drawing, replies the mother,
will always be of advantage to him in his trade;
an equivocal answer, it must be acknowledged,
under which she conceals a far different ambition.
Why should not this fine, intelligent boy, be a
painter or sculptor, as well as others ? She stints
herself, to purchase crayons and drawing-paper,
expensive as it is. Her son will shortly exhibit
and carry off all the prizes. In his mother's
dreams already mingles the great name of Rome.
And thus the mother's ambition too often suc-
ceeds in making a poor and highly necessitous
artist, of one who would have earned a better live-
lihood as a workman. The arts can hardly be re-
munerative even in time of peace, when all in
easy circumstances, and especially females, instead
of purchasing works of art, are artists themselves.
Let a war come, or revolution ; art is synonymous
with starvation.
Often, too, the embryo artist, already in career,
and full of ardour and youthful energy, is stopped
suddenly short. His father dies ; he must become
the support of his family, so turns workman. Gfeat
is the mother's grief, loud her lamentation ; and
all heart is taken out of the youth.
For the rest of his life he will curse fate ; his
soul and his thoughts will be far from his work.
Cruel struggles ! And yet nothing will stop him.
Do not come here with your advice; you would
• The observation one day made by M. Percier to M.
Belloc, the director of the gratuitous school of design.
t Clerical teachers in the French free-schools.
X The "Sacred-Heart;" the representation of a heart, on
a cross, commemorative of t)ie Atonement, which, blessed
by the priest, is a common ornament of the house in catholic
countries.
c2
20
THE PEOPLE.
meet with a sorry reception. It is too late ; he
must on through all obstacles. You will see him
always reading, dreaming ; reading during the few
minutes he is allowed for his meals, and in the
evening, and far into the night, absorbed in his
books; all Sunday shut up in his room and thought-
ful. It is difficult to picture to ourselves the hunger
of reading produced by this state of mind. During
work — and that work the most irreconcileable of
all with study, amidst the whirl and vibration of
twenty looms — a hapless spinner with whom I was
acquainted, would place a book at the corner of his
loom, and read a line each time that the sledge
flew oft" and left him a second.
How long the day is when passed thus ! How
irritating the last few hours ! To him who yearns
for the sound of the bell, and curses its delay, the
odious workroom, as evening sets in, seems peopled
with phantasmagoria. The demons of impatience
are mocking and mowing in its shadowy recesses,
" O liberty, light ! are you leaving me here for
ever ? "
I pity his family on his returning home, if he
has a family. A man resolutely plunged into this
struggle, and engrossed with his personal progress,
looks upon everything else as immaterial. This
sombre course of life deadens the very faculty of
loving. His family becomes less dear, for it is in
the way. He even weans himself from his country,
for he blames it for the injustice of his fate.
The father of our literary workman, grosser,
duller, and in so many respects the inferior of the
two, had nevertheless one advantage over his son,
— the love of his native land was much stronger in
him ; he thought less of mankind, and more of
home. The large French family, and his own be-
loved little family, were his world, into which he
threw his whole heart. Alas ! where has this
cheering home, this happy fireside which we were
but this moment admiring, vanished ? "
Knowledge of itself does not dry up the heart,
does not chill it. Whenever it produces this effect,
it is through entering the mind partially, through
being cruelly shorn of its fair proportions. It has
not been prebented in its true, natural, and full
light ; but obli([uely, scantily, like the scattered
beams that make their way into a cellar. It does
not make its possessors malignant and envious by
what it communieatus, but by what it holds back.
He who is ignorant of the complicated media by
which wealth is created, must naturally conclude
that it is not created, that it does not grow, but
changes hands only ; and that man cannot become
rich save by despoiling his fellows. Every acquisi-
tion will seem to him a robbery, and he will hate
all who have accumulated. Hate ! wherefoi-e ?
On account of the goods of this world ? Why,
without love, the world and all it contains is
valueless.
Whatever the inevitable eri'ors of incomplete
study, we must respect the student. What more
touching, what fuller of grave matter for reflection,
than to see the man who, up to this moment, learnt
by chance, will to study, and pursuing knowledge
with all the vehemence of an impassioned will
through countless obstacles ? It is voluntary im-
provement that places the workman, — seen in this
exact point of view, — not only above the peasant,
but above the upper classes, as they are called, who
have all at their commaud— books, leisure ; whom
knowledge woos, and who, nevertheless, once they
are freed from the shackles of compulsory educa-
tion, turn their backs on study, and become in-
different to the pursuit of truth. Many is the man
who has carried oft' the honours at our first schools,
still young, but old at heart, who forgets the learn-
ing that he a few years since cultivated, without
having to plead in excuse the whirlwind of the pas-
sions, who relishes nothing, sleeps away his exist-
ence, smokes and dreams.
Obstacles I know to be a great spur. The work-
man loves books, because he has few of them.
May be he has but one ; and if it be a sound work,
he gets on all the better from having but one. One
book, read and read over and over again, which
you ruminate upon and digest, often develops the
intellectual growth more than a vast indigested
mass of reading. 1 lived years with a Virgil, and
found my account in it. An odd volume of Racine,
picked up at a stall on the quay, made the poet of
Toulon.
They who are rich internally have always re-
sources enough. What they have they extend and
fecundate by thought, expanding it into the infinite.
Instead of enjoying this world of clay, they make
one of their own, all gold and light. They say to
the first, " Keep thy poverty, which thou callest
riches ; I am richer in myself."
A peculiar character of gentleness and sadness
is observable in most of the poems written of late
years by men of the working class, which strongly
reminds me of their predecessors, the workmen of
the middle age. If any of these poems betray as-
perity and violence, they are the smaller number.
These true poets would have been borne yet higher
by their lofty inspirations, had they not too deferen-
tially followed the aristocratic models.
They are but beginning. Why hastily say that
they will never attain the highest rank ? You set
out with the false idea that time and cultivation do
every thing. You make no account of that mternal
development which the soul attains by its own
proper force in the midst even of manual occupa-
tions, of the spontaneous vegetation which forces
its growth through every obstacle. Men of books
know that this man of no books and of scant edu-
cation possesses one thing by way of indemnifica-
tion,— he has taken his degrees in sorrows.
Succeed or not, I do not see how the matter can
be remedied. He will go his own road ; the road
of thought and of suff"ering. " He sought the light
(says my Virgil), caught a glimpse of it, and
groaned!" .... And, though with groans, he will
ever seek it. Who can have caught a ghmpse of
it, and ever renounce it ?
" Light ! More light still !" Such was Goethe's
last exclamation. This cry of expu-ing genius is
the general cry of nature, and echoes from world
to world. What this mighty man, one of God's
eldest sons, exclaimed, his humblest children, the
lowest creations of animal life, the very mollusca
exclaim from the depths of ocean. They will not
live wholly where light cannot reach them. The
flower asks for light, turns to meet it, without it
droops. Our yoke-fellows in labour, the animals,
rejoice as we do, or pine, with its coming and its
departure. My grandson, two months old, weeps
as soon as day draws to a close.
Walking this summer in my garden, I heard
and noticed on a branch a bird singing to the set-
THE PRESENT MANUFACTURERS, ORIGINALLY WORKMEN.
21
ting sun ; he turned to tlie sinking luminary, and
was clearly transported at the brilliant sight. . . .
And so was I to mark that songster. Our poor
caged birds had never given me a notion of so in-
telligent and powerful a creature, so small, so
impassioned : . . . I was thrilled by its strains. It
threw back its tiny head, dilated its chest ; never
did singer or poet give way to such naive ec-
stasy. However, it was not love (the season for
that was over) ; it was manifestly the charm of
light, the sweet radiance of the departing orb which
ravished that little breast !
Barbarous knowledge, hard pride, which so de-
preciates animate nature, and separates man so
widely from his lower brothers !
I exclaimed with tears, " Poor child of light,
that reflectest it in thy song, how right art thou to
greet it with thy strains ! Night, full of ambush
and of danger to thee, closely resembles death.
Wilt thou be spared to see to-morrow's light only!"
.... Then, from its fate, mentally turning to that
of all beings who, from the depths of creation, rise
so slowly to the light, I exclaimed with Goethe and
the little bird, " Light, Lord, more light still !"
CHAPTER IV.
SERVITUDES OP THE MANUFACTURER.
I FIND it stated in the little book of the Rouen
weaver, which I have already quoted, " Our manu-
facturers have all been orhjinally workmen ,•" and,
again, " Most of our manufacturers of the present
day (1836) were hard-working, thrifty workmen in
the first years of the Restoration." This observa-
tion I take to be general, and not confined to
Rouen.
Many of our contractors for buildings have told
me that they were all tcorhnen ; that they came up
to Paris as masons, carpenters, &c.
If workmen have been enabled to rise to such
vast and complicated undertakings as our large
manufactories, one may much more readily believe
their setting up on their own account in those
businesses which require far less capital, in minor
branches of manufacture and retail trade. The
number of licensed dealers remained almost sta-
tionary under the Empire, but has doubled in the
thirty years which have elapsed since 1815. Six
hundred thousand individuals, or thereabouts, have
become manufacturers or shopkeepers. Now as,
with us, all who can manage to live stay as they
are, and will not run the risks of business, we may
boldly affirm that half a million of workmen have
risen to the rank of masters, and have obtained
what they have believed to be independence.
This movement vvas especially rapid in the ten
first years, from 1815 to 1825. Those brave men
who suddenly wheeled to the right-about from war
to business, set about it as if they were storming
the enemy, and carried every position. Their con-
fidence was so great, that they even inspired capi-
talists with it. These enthusiastic natures hurried
along with them the coldest. It was readily be-
lieved that they were about to renew the whole
series of our victories in the field of peace, and
here give us our revenge for our later reverses.
There is no denying to these newly risen work-
men, who founded our manufactures, the possession
of eminent qualities — impulse, daring, originality,
and, often, a remarkable truth of calculation.
Many made their fortunes ; may their sons not
lose them ?
But with all these qualities, our nianufiicturors of
1815 did not the less experience the demoralisation
of that sad epoch. We miglit then see how nearly
allied political death is to moral. They preserved,
in general, all the violence of their military life,
and none of the sentiment of honour; cared neither
for men nor things, recked not of the future, and
behaved brutally to two different classes of persons,
the workman and the consumer.
_ However, workmen being still few at this pe-
riod in comparison with the demand, even in the
power-loom factories, they were obliged to give
higli wages, and with this bounty pressed men
both in town and country : conscripts of labour,
they made them march at the quick time of the
machine, and required them to be, like it, inde-
fatigable. They seemed to apply to manufacture
the grand imperial principle, and to sacrifice men
to cut short war. That national spirit of impatience
which often makes us cruel to animals, gained
ground to the loss of our men of military tra-
ditions : as work was to go on at the pas de charge,
and so quicken to a run, all the worse for those
who fell.
As regarded traffic, the manufacturers of that
day traded as if they were in an enemy's counti-y,
and treated the purchasers just as in 1815 our shop-
women of Paris fleeced the Cossack. They sold
with false weights, with false measures, and
palmed off dyes that would wash out for fixed
colours. They thus soon finished their game, and
retired with full pockets, after having closed her
best markets against France, compromised for
many years her commercial reputation, and, graver
still, rendered the Englishman the essential service
of alienating from us, to say not a word of anything
else, a world — Spanish America, a world that was
an imitation of our Revolution.
Their successors, who are either their sons or
their principal workmen, have enough to do now,
preceded as they are in every market by this ill-
repute. They are surprised and irritated at finding
their profits so reduced. The greater number
would willingly withdraw from business, if they
could ; but they are embarked in it and must go on.
March ! march !
In other countries, manufacture rests on large
capitals, on a collective whole of habits, traditions,
and sure relations, — it rests on the basis of a vast
and regular commerce. Here, truth to say, it
is only a struggle. An adventurous workman,
who inspires confidence, gets up a partnei'ship, or
else a young man hazards what his father had con-
trived to lay by. He begins with a small capital,
or his wife's fortune, or a loan. Heaven send him
the luck to wind up his affairs between two crises,
for they come every six yeai's (1818, 1825, 1830,
18.36). 'Tis ever the same story. One or two
years after the crisis, some ordei-s come in, and
with them forgetfulness of the past, hope of the
future. The manufacturer thinks himself fairly
started. He urges forward, hurries, overstrains
men and things, workmen and machines ; the in-
dustrial Bonaparte of 1820 reappeai-s for a mo-
ment, and then the workhouses are filled, the
market overstocked, and he nmst sell at a loss. . . .
Besides, these expensive machines are, every five
years, worn out, or else pushed aside by some new
22
THE PEOPLE.
invention. His profits, if any, go to purchase new
machineiy.
The capitalist, warned by so many lessons, now
believes that France is rather a manufacturing
than a commercial country, and better calculated
to make than to sell. He lends to the new manu-
facturer, as to a man about to embark on a perilous
voyage. What security has he ? The most splen-
did manufactories are only parted with at a great
sacrifice, and its brilliant machinery is worth no
more, in a few years, than what the iron and copper
will fetch. Therefore, he does not make his ad-
vances on the security of the manufactory, but of
the man. The latter has this melancholy advan-
tage— he may be flung into prison : this stamps
value on his signature. He is perfectly aware that
he has pawned his body, and, sometimes, much
more — the lives of his wife and children, the pro-
perty of his father-in-law, or that of too trusting a
friend, perhaps, even property of which he is tlie
trustee, dragged on as he is by the madness of this
feverish existence. . . . He has no time to bargain ;
must conquer or die, make his fortune or drown
himself.
A man in this state of mind is not overbur-
thened with sensibility. Were he kind to clerks
and workmen, 'twould be a miracle. Mark him,
striding hurriedly along the vast floors of his fac-
tory, with stern and dogged look, . . , When he is
at one end, the workman at the other whispers to
his fellow, " What a temper he's in to-day ; liow
he has given it the overseer !" He treats them
all as he himself has just been treated. He is but
now returned from the moneyed town, to Mulhau-
sen from Bale, for instance, from Rouen to Deville.
He cries out, and those around him are astonished.
They know not that the Jew has just taken from
his body the pound of flesh.
From whom will he recover it ? From the con-
sumer ? He is on his guard. The manufacturer
falls back on the woi-kman. Wherever there is no
apprenticeship, wherever apprentices are heed-
lessly taken, they offer themselves in crowds at
nominal wages, and the manufacturer takes the
opportunity to insist on a general fall*. But then,
as he over-manufactures, he is constrained to sell
at a loss ; and the depreciation of wages, which is
death to the workman, is no gain to the manufac-
turer ; the consumer alone reaps the profit.
The hardest manufacturer was, however, born a
man, and at first felt an interest in this crowd of
human beingsf. Gradually, the cai'es of business,
* I long refused to believe what I was told of the in-
famous frauds practised by certain manufacturers on the
consumer, with regard to quality ; on the workman, with
regard to quantity of work. But I have had the charges
conlirmed by friends of the nianufaclurers, who spoke of
them with grief and humiliation, by magistrates, merchants,
and bankers. The prud'hommes have no authority to re-
press these crimes; and the unfurtunate workman dares
not complain. Actions can be brought by the crown only.
+ This gradual induration, the aptitude acquired of stifling
in oneself the voice of humanity, is most subtly analyzed
by M. Emmery in his pamphlet, Sur I'Amelioratinn du Sort
des Ouvriers dans les Travaux Publics (1837). He treats,
especially, of workmen maimed in the dangerous works
undertaken for government by contractors.
"A contractor, with his heart in the right place, may
once, perhaps several times, indeed, at first, assist workmen
who have met with an injury; but when accidents become
numerous he tinds it too great a lax on his purse. As he
the uncerteiinty of his position, his dangers, and
moral sufferings, have made him perfectly indif-
ferent to the physical sufferings of liis workmen.
Neither is he as aware of them as his father was *,
himself a working man. Renewed unceasingly,
he comes to consider them as cyphers, machines,
though of a less docile and regular kind, whom
future improvements in machinery will allow him
to do without. They are the defect of the system.
In this world of iron, whose movements are so
regular, the only thing to be found fault with is
man.
It is curious to observe, that the only ones (few
indeed) who interest themselves in the fate of the
workman, are occasionally petty nianufacturez's, who
live along with him in patriarchal fashion; or else,
on the contrary, large and opulent firms which,
resting on solid capitals, are above all the ordinary
anxieties of commerce. The whole interval be-
tween is a pitiless battle-field.
All know that our manufacturers of Mulhausen
petitioned, in opposition to their own interests, for
a law regulating the hours of employment for
children, and in 1836, after an attempt made by
one of them to furnish his workmen healthy habi-
tations, with small gardens, these same manufac-
turers of Alsace, touched by this happy idea, in
the impulse of generous emotion subscribed two
millions of francs. What became of this subscrip-
tion ? I have never been able to learn.
There can be no doubt that the manufacturers
would be more humane, if their families, fre-
quently most charitably disposed, were not so
much estranged from the factory f. They gene-
puts himself on his guard against the first movements of
generosity, he insensibly checks personal application, and de-
creases in a marked manner the extent of assistance he may
still give. He observes that he is obliged to pay his work-
men in proportion to the danger of the employment, with-
out being himself able to make any surcharge on that
account ; and this increase of pay soon seems to him the
equivalent for any accidents that may occur. To go on afford-
ing extra help strikes him as being beyond his means. The
workman who has met with an accident has not been long
in his employ, the one who is taken ill is not one of his best
hands, &c. That is to say, his heart grows hardened from
habit, often from necessity, all charitable feeling evaporates,
the little aid he may continue to extend is no longer direct-
ed by a vigorous sense of justice towards all; and the sole
result of all the generous emotions which such moving
pictures ought to produce are limited to a few presents con-
ferred arbitrarily, and calculated, not on the real wants of
the distressed families, but according to the future interests
of the contractor's works."
• The difference between father and son is, that the
latter, who has not been a workman, being less skilled in
the actual processes of manufacture, and less aware of the
limits of the possible and the impossible, is sometimes hard
and harsh through ignorance.
t I never shall forget a touching circumstance, full of
grace and charms, of which I was an eye-witness. The
owner of a manufactory having the kindness to propose
showing me over the works himself, his young wife would
join us. Surprised at first, to see her in her white dress, at-
tempting this traject through wet and dry (all is not de-
lightful or clean even in the manufacture of the most
brilliant objects), I afterwards saw why she braved this
purgatory. Where her husband showed me things, she
saw men, human souls, and, often, deeply-wounded ones.
Without saying a word in explanation to me, I perceived,
that whilst giiditig through this crowd, she had a delicate,
penetrating perception of all the thoughts, I will nut say of
rally live apart, only know the workmen at a dis-
tance, and are apt to exaggerate their vices,
judging of them almost always by the moment
I have spoken of above, when liberty, long held
captive, bursts foi-th, noisy and disorderly; I mean,
the moment when work is over, and they are
leaving the mill. Often, too, manufacturer and
family hate the workmen, supposing themselves
hated ; and, contrary to the commonly received
notion, I must say that in this they are not un-
frequently mistaken. In large manufactories the
workman hates the overseer, to whose tyranny
he is more immediately exposed ; whilst the mas-
ter's, not being so closely felt, is less hateful to
him. Except he have been taught to hate it,
he looks upon it as he does on the tyranny of
fate, and does not vex himself about it.
The manufacturing question, as regards ourselves,
is exceedingly complicated by the position of
other countries in relation to France. Blockaded,
in a measure, by the unanimous ill-will of Europe,
she has lost, together with her ancient alliances,
all hope of opening, whether in East or West, new
channels of commerce. Industrialism, which has
founded our present system on the strange suppo-
sition that the English, our rivals, would be our
friends, finds itself, with all this friendship, blocked
and walled up as in a tomb. . . . Certes, our
grand agricultural and warlike France, of twenty-
five millions of men, which readily listened to the
industrial portion of the community, and remained
immoveable on the faith of their word, which,
through kindness to them, did not resume our
frontier of the Rhine, is now justified in deploring
its credulity. More sensible than they, it had
ever believed that the English would remain
English.
Let us distinguish, however, amongst manu-
facturers. There are who, instead of falling to
sleep behind the triple line of customs, have nobly
continued the war against England. We thank
them for their heroic efforts to lift the stone under
which she thought to crush us. Their industry,
which makes head against her notwithstanding all
disadvantages (their expenses being often greater
by a third), has defeated her on various points,
particularly in those departments of manufacture
which require the most shining qualities, the most
inexhaustible wealth of invention. They have
conquered by superiority in art.
It would require a work specifically devoted to
the subject, to display the magnificent efforts of
Alsace, which, with a feeling the reverse of mer-
cantile, without a thought of the expense, has
drawn together all means, summoned every science,
willed the beautiful, whatever it might cost. Lyons
has solved the problem of a continual metamor-
phosis, each change increasing in ingenuity and bril-
liancy. What «an we say of that Parisian fairy,
hate, but of corroding care, of envy, perhaps, which were
fermenting in those many minds. As we went on, she
found many opportunities for addressing various parties,
and always with good sense and admirable tact, at times
almost with tenderness; as, for instance, speaking to a
young girl in ill health, the youthful mistress, herself an
invalid, spoke fp.elingly. Many were evidently touched :
an aged workman, who fancied she was tired, offered her a
seat with a charming vivacity. The younger were more
grave. She, who saw every thing, spoke, and the cloud
fled.
who responds every minute to the most unforeseen
impulses of fantasy ?
Unexpected, surprising event ! France sells. . ,
France excluded, condemned, interdicted. . . They
come despite themselves, despite themselves they
buy.
They buy patterns, which, good or bad, they
set about copying at home. An Englishman, ex-
amined befoi-e a parliamentary commission, states
that he keeps an establishment at Paris, in order to
secure patterns. A few pieces bought at Paris, at
Lyons, in Alsace, and then copied over yonder,
enables the English or German imitator to mun-
date the world. So with books : France writes,
Belgium sells.
The products in which we excel are unfortu-
nately those which are constantly altering, and
which call for fresh outlay. Although it is the
province of art to add immeasurably to the value
of raw materials, so expensive an art as this
allows of but scanty profits. England, on the con-
trary, having channels for her trade amongst the
inferior populations of the five divisions of the
globe, manufactures in huge masses and uniform
fabrics, renewed without any fresh outlay or new
researches. Products of the kind, whether vulgai'
or not, are ever lucrative.
Work, then, O France, to remain poor ! Work,
suffer, without ever growing weary. The motto
of the grand manufactures which constitute thy
glory, and erect thy taste and sense of ai*t into laws,
is this — Invent, or perish !
CHAPTER V.
SERVITOBES OF THE SHOPKEEPER*.
The man of labour, workman or manufacturer,
usually looks upon the shopkeeper as an idle man;
seated in his shop, what has he to do but to read
his paper of a morning, talk the whole day long,
and in the evening lock up his till ? The workman
resolves, if he can manage to lay by, to turn shop-
keeper.
The shopkeeper is the tyrant of the manufac-
tui'er, and throws upon him all the meannesses and
vexations he has himself to undergo at the hands
of the customer. Now the customer, in the pre-
sent state of our habits and morals, is a man who
wishes to buy for nothing, the poor man who
affects to be rich, the mushroom of yesterday, who
finds great difficulty in extracting from his pocket
the money which has but just found its way into
it f . They require two things — show and cheap-
ness ; the intrinsic worth of the object is a second-
ary matter. Who asks the price of a good watch ?
No one. Even the rich only want a showy watch
at a low price.
The shopkeeper must outwit these folk, or pe-
rish. His whole life consists of two wai-s, — a war
of trickery and cunning against the unreasonable
» I treat alone of the individual dealer, the retailer, such
as he is generally found tliroughout France, not of the large
partnerships which exist only in some of our large cities.
t New classes starting into fortune, as is exceedingly well
explained by M. Leclaire, in his Peinlure enBdtiment (Orna-
mental House-Painting). They know nothing of the real
value of objects, but want what is showy— in water-colours,
no matter.
24
THE PEOPLE,
pui'chaser ; a war of vexations and importunity
against the manufacturer. Fickle, restless, trifling,
he pays the latter back day by day the absurdest
caprices of his master, the public ; pulls hira to the
right or tlie left, gives him a different direction
every moment, hinders him from following out any
idea, and renders invention of the highest order in
a variety of fabrics an impossibility.
The chief aim of the shopkeeper is to get the
manufacturer to help him to trick the buyer ; to
prevail over him to descend to petty frauds, and
not to shrink from great ones. I have heai'd
manufacturers grieve over the dishonourable things
required of them. They must either lose their
customers or become accomplices in the most dis-
graceful cheats. It is not enough that they must
deteriorate the quality of goods, they must also
turn forgers, and affix to their goods the mai'ks of
noted manufactories.
The repugnance to trade displayed by the noble
republics of antiquity, and by the haughty barons
of the middle age, is no doubt unreasonable, if by
trade is understood the complicated manufactures
which require science or art ; or that vast com-
merce which supposes so much knowledge, inquiry,
combination. But it is perfectly reasonable if un-
derstood of the ordinary habits of traffic, of the
miserable necessity the shopkeeper feels for lying,
cheating, falsifying.
I do not hesitate to affirm that, to a man of
honour, the position of the most dependent work-
man is freedom compared with this ; though a
slave in body, he is free in soul. On the contrary,
to enthral his soul and his word, to be obliged, from
morning to evening, to mask his thoughts, is the
lowest slavery.
Imagine this man, who has been a soldier, who
has possessed in all other things a sense of military
honour, and who resigns himself to this ; he must
endure agony.
What is strange is, that it is precisely for honour
that he lies daily — to do honour to his business
Dishonour in his mind is not falsehood, but failure.
Rather than fail, commercial honour will drive
him on to that point where fraud becomes theft,
and falsification, poisoning.
Mild poisoning, I know, in small doses, which
only kills slowly. Though it should be shown that
articles of food and daily use are adulterated only
with innocent *, inert, inactive substances, the work-
man, who believes that he is recruiting his strength
whilst using them, and finds them fail, goes on
ruining and exhausting himself, and lives (if I may
so speak) on the capital, on the funds of his life,
which is slipping away from him.
The guilt, in my opinion, of this adulterator, who
sells intoxication, is not only poisoning the lower
classes, but degrading them. The man, exhausted
with work, who enters confidently into the public-
house as into his house of freedom, what finds he
there ? — disgrace. The spirituous compound which
is sold him under the name of wine, produces, as
soon as drunk, an effect which double or triple the
quantity of wine would not have had. It mounts
* It has been proved juridically, that many of these sub-
stances are by no means innocent. See the Journal de Chi-
tnie Medicate, the Annates d' Hygiene, and the works of MM.
Garnier et Harel, Falsifications des Substances Alimen-
taires, 1844.
to the brain, renders mind, tongue, and body alike
unsteady. Drunk, and his pocket empty, the pub-
lican turns him into the street. Who has not been
struck to the heart on seeing, of a cold winter day,
some poor old woman, who has been quaffing poison
to warm herself, turned out in this state to be
jeered by ruffian childi-en ? The rich pass by and
exclaim, " These are the people ! "
Every man who has or who can borrow a thou-
sand francs, boldly commences business. From
workman he turns shopkeeper, that is, an idle man.
He lived in the public-house ; he opens a public-
house. He opens, not far from his old haunts, or
rather, as near as possible, in order to draw their
customers away ; he flatters himself with the
amiable idea that he shall ruin his neighbour. He
gets customers at once, — all who are in debt to his
neighbour, and who never pay. After a few
months he finds that his novelty is gone, and that
new rivals start up around him. He goes back —
fails. He has lost his money, and what was more
precious than money, the habits of work. Great is
the joy of the survivors, who gradually come to the
same end. Others follow, and he is no longer
seen. . . Sad and miserable traffic, carried on without
industry, and worked on the one principle of de-
vouring one another.
The demand hardly increases, yet shopkeepers
increase, multiply perceptibly, as do competition,
envy, hate. They do nothing ; there they are,
standing at their doors, their arms crossed, looking
askance at each other, to see whether the faithless
customer will not make a mistake as to his shop.
The shopkeepers of Paris, eighty thousand in num-
ber, had last year forty-six thousand actions before
the tribunal of commerce alone, not to speak of
the other tribunals. Frightful amount ! How
many hates and quaiTels does it not indicate !
The special object of this hate, whom the li-
censed dealer pursues and seizes when he can, is
the poor devil with a perambulating shop, the un-
happy woman who bears goods about in a basket,
and often also a child as well *. Let her not think
of sitting down, let her be ever on the move ; if
not, she is taken up.
Truth to say, I know not whether he who has
her taken up, this sorry shopkeeper, is happier for
being seated, without the power of stirring, bound
to wait, unable to calculate on anytiiing before-
hand. The shopkeeper scai'cely ever knows whence
his gain will come to him. Receiving his mer-
chandize at second or third-hand, he knows not the
state of his own trade throughout Europe, and has
no means of inferring whether he shall next year
make his fortune, or be bankrupt.
Two circumstances render the destiny of the
manufacturer, and even of the workman, prefer-
able to that of the shopkeeper. 1. Tlie sliopkeeper
does not create. He has not the serious joy, worthy
of man, of seeing a thing born, of seeing grow un-
der his hand, a work which assumes form, becomes
harmonious, and which indemnifies its creator by
its progress, and rewards him for his weary watcli-
ings and toil.
2. I'he shopkeeper is obliged to please ; another
disadvantage, and, to my mind, a fearful one.
The workman gives his time, the manufacturer his
merchandize, for so much money — a simple con-
• See the touching picture of Savinien Lapointe.
HUMILIATION OF THE SHOPKEEPER.
25
ti'act, wliich has notliing degrading in it. Neither
the one nor tlie other need flatter. Neither is
forced, though heart-sick, and with eyes filling
with tears, to be agreeable and sprightly all at
once, like the mistress of a shop [dame de comptoir).
The hapless shopkeeper, torn with care about the
bill which falls due to-morrow, must smile ; and,
by a cruel effort, give himself wholly up to the
babble of the young woman of fashion, who makes
him unroll a liundred bales, prattles for two hours,
and then leaves without buying.
He must please, his wife must please. He has
embarked in his business, not only his goods, per-
son, and life, but often his family*.
The man who is least susceptible as regards him-
self, will be agonized hourly at seeing his wife, or his
daughter, behind the counter. Even the stranger,
the disinterested witness, does not see without
emotion the habits and domestic privacy of a
wortliy family entering into business, forcibly de-
ranged— the hearth in the street, the holy of
holies paraded with the show of goods ! The
young girl listens, with cast- down eyes, to the im-
pertinent prate of an unfeeling coxcomb. Return
a few months after, you will find her modesty
changed into effrontery.
But the wife contributes much more than the
daughter to the success of business. She talks
with winning grace and charm. Where is the
harm, when her every word and act has a thousand
witnesses ? She talks, but she listens . . and to
every one rather than her husband. The husband
is a " kill-joy," has no amusing chatter, is all
hesitation and scruple, a waverer in politics, and
in all besides, discontented with government, and
discontented with the discontented.
The wife becomes more and more conscious that
her occupation is a tiresome one — twelve hours a
day in the same spot, exposed behind a window
with the goods. She will not always remain impas-
sive and immoveable : the statue may be animated.
And now begin the husband's torments. The
most cruel spot in the world for a jealous man is
a shop. . . . All enter, all flatter the misti-ess
The wretched wight is not always sure on whom
to fasten the blame. He loses his senses, or
makes away with himself, or with her; or will take
to his bed and die. . . Unhappiest of all, perhaps, is
he who resigns himself to his fate.
There was a man who died on this wise slowly,
not of jealousy, but of grief and humiliation,
at seeing himself daily outraged and insulted
in the person of his wife — I allude to the un-
fortunate Louvet. After having escaped from
the dangers of the Reign of Terror, and returned
to the Convention, being without fortune, he
settled his wife as a bookseller in the Palais
Royal ; this was a thriving business at that
period ; indeed, the only one. Unhappily, the en-
thusiastic Girondin, as hostile to the royalists as
♦ Much has been said of the workwoman employed in
the silk manufacture, and of the clerk who makes her pay
with her person for his winking at theft ; and so of the
females engaged in the cotton mills; but, I think, wrong-
fully. The manufacturer is but little in contact with those
he employs. It has been said, too, that the country usurer
often sets an immoral price on his forbearance. Why has
nothing been said of theshopwoman exposed, on this fashion,
and forced to please the customer, and give up her time and
ear to him, so often, too, to her moral ruin f
to the Mountain, had innumerable enemies. The
gilded youth (jcunesse dorie), who showed how
well they could run on the 13th Vende'miaire,
marched bravely up to Louvet's shop, took pos-
session of it, giggled, grinned, and avenged them-
selves on a woman. To the provocations of the
exasperated husband, their only answer was shouts
of laughter. He had himself supplied them with
arms by printing, in his account of his flight and
misfortunes, a thousand impassioned, and, no doubt,
indiscreet and imprudent details, touching his
Lodoiska. One thing should have protected her
and rendered her sacred in the eyes of men of
heart — her courage, her devotion : she had saved
her husband. . . This was thrown away upon our
gallant gentlemen, who coarsely kept up the cruel
joke; and it was Louvet's death. His wife wished
to die — but her children, whom they brought to
her, condemned her to live.
CHAPTER VI.
SERVITODES OF THE PUBLIC SERVANT.
When children grow up, and the family meet in
conclave to consider what is to be done with them,
the sprightliest and most I'efractory does not fail
to exclaim, " I will be my own master." He takes
to business, and becomes his own master after the
fashion of which we have just been speaking. The
other brother, the docile one, the staid and dis-
creet, will enter a public office.
At least, every effort will be made to get him
into one. The family cheerfully undergo enormous
sacrifices to this end, and often beyond its means.
Great efforts, and what a result ! After ten years
at college, and several before that at school, he
will be appointed supernumerary, and, afterwards,
get a small salary. His brother, the tradesman,
who during all this time has fared very differently,
is full of envy of him, and is constantly alluding to
the unproductive classes, " who sit and sleep over
the banquet of the budget." In the estimation of
the man of trade there is no producer save liimself
— the judge, the soldier, the professor, the govern-
ment-clerk, are "unproductive consumers'* ".
The parents were well aware that public em-
ployment is not a lucrative career; but they coveted
for their quiet son a safe, assured, regular means
of living. After so many revolutions this is the
beau-ideal of families, this, in their opinion, the lot
of the government-clerk. All else comes, goes,
varies, changes : he alone has escaped the muta-
tions of this mortal life, and lives in a better
world.
I know not whether he ever may have enjoyed
this earthly paradise, this life of immobility and of
sleep ; but, at the present day, I see no one ex-
posed to greater changes. Not to speak of re-
trenchments and dismissals which fall on some, and
which are a subject of constant fear to all, his life
is nothing else than mutations, join-neys, sudden
translations (for this or that electoral mystery)
from one end of France to the other ; — inexplicable
disgraces, pretended promotions, which raise his
salary some two hundred francs a year and send
* As if justice, civil order, the defence of the country,
and public education, were not productions, and the greatest
of all !
2C
THE PEOPLE.
him packing all the way from Perpignan to Lille.
The roads are thronged with clerks moving from
one station to another with all their fui-niture ; so
that many, now, never dream of troubling them-
selves with any. Encamped in an inn, and their
bundle soon made up, they live there a year or
less, a sad and solitary life in an unknown town ;
and when, at last, they have begun to form some
intimacies, they are hurried off to the other pole.
Let them beware of marrying ; their situation
would be all the worse. Independently of these
incessant changes, their scanty salaries cannot sup-
port a family. Those amongst our public function-
aries who are obliged to keep up the respectability
of their position, having the charge of souls, as the
judge, the officer, the professor, will pass their lives,
if they have no fortune of their own, in a miserable
struggle to hide their misery and to invest it with
some dignity.
Have you not met in a diligence (I do not say
once, but often), a respectable, serious-looking, or
rather, melanchi)ly lady, respectably dressed,
though somewhat out of the fashion, with one or
two children, numei-ous boxes and luggage, and a
quantity of furniture on the imperial. On reach-
ing your destination, you will see her received by
her husband, — a brave and deserving officer, who
is past his better days. And thus she follows
him — a life of inconveniences and weariness —
from garrison to garrison, lies in on the road, is
nursed in an inn, then resumes her journey. No-
thing can be more saddening than to see these poor
women thus sharing, through affection and duty,
all the servitudes of a soldier's life.
There has been little change in the salaries of
all paid by government, since the time of the Em-
pire *. In this point of view, almost all enj')y that
fixity which seems to be considered their supreme
happiness. But as the value of money has fallen,
the cipher I'epresenting their salary, nominally the
same, has fallen in value also, and goes on falling.
This is a fact we have pointed out when speaking
of the wages of the industrial classes.
Fi-ance may boast of one thing, which is, that
with the exception of some high offices, which are
far overpaid, our public functionaries serve the
state for almost nothing. And, nevertheless, I boldly
affirm that in this country of ours, so evil spoken
of, there are few, very few, public servants acces-
sible to bribery.
I know the objection. Many are corrupted by the
hope of advancement, by intrigue, by evil influen-
ces. 1 know ; I grant this. And yet I will, never-
theless, maintain, that amongst this poorly-paid
crowd, you will not find one to take money in the
shameless manner witnessed in Russia, in Italy,
and so many other countries.
I come to the higher ranks. The judge, who de-
cides on the fate and fortunes of men, who has
daily on his hands matters involving millions, and
who, for his higii, constant, wearing duties, re-
ceives less than many a working man, is inaccessible
to bribery.
• In all the otiier kingdoms of Europe they have been
raised. With us, the salaries of a very small number of
offices have been raised, but many others have been cut
down ; for instance, the clerks of our preftctures and snus-
piefectures. For the general character and classification of
this great army of functionaries, read M. Vivim's imiiortant
work, Eludes AdministraUves, 1845.
Go lower. Go to a class exposed to great temp-
tations. Take the custom-house officer. There
are who may take a trifle for drink for a trifling
civility, but not one to expose himself to the slight-
est suspicion of fraud. And what does he get for
his ungrateful tasii \ Six hundred francs ; some-
thing more than thirty sous a day ; and his nights
are not paid for. On the frontier he passes every
other night, without any other shelter than his
cloak, exposed to the attacks of the smuggler, the
pelting of the storm ; and on the downs, is at
times seized and carried off to sea. 'Tis there,
to that desert strand, that his wife brings him his
scanty meal ; for he is married, has children, and
has to maintain four or five human beings on
about thirty sous.
A journeyman-baker in Paris * earns more than
two custom-house officers, one lieutenant of in-
fantry, more than many a magistrate, more tlian
the majority of professors. He earns as much as
six national schoolmasters.
Shame ! disgrace ! . . . The people that pays
the worst those who instruct the people (hide our-
selves whilst we confess it !) is France.
The France of this day. On the contrary, the
true France, the France of the Revolution, de-
clared instruction to be sacerdotal, the schoolmaster
to be the equal of the priest. It laid down as a prin-
ciple, that the first expense to be undertaken by the
State, was that of instruction. Out of its fearful
poverty the Convention voted fifty-four millions
for the purposes of primary instruction f, and
would have given them had it lasted longer. . . .
Strange time, when men called themselves mate-
rialists, and which was, in reality, the apotheosis of
thought, the x-eign of mind !
I will not hide the truth. Of all the miseries of
the present day, there is not one which weighs
more heavily upon me. The most meritorious, the
most wretched J, the most neglected man in France,
is the schoolmaster. The State, which does not
even know what constitutes its true instruments
and its real strength ; the State, which does not
dream that its most powerful moral lever is this
class of men ; the State, I say, abandons them to
the enemies of the State. You say that the
Freres teach better. I deny it. And were it
• That is to say, the journeyman who enjoys the medium
rate of wages the year round, and without any winter stop-
pages. See above, note, p. 18.
t Three months after the 9th Thermidor (27th Brumaire,
year ii:.), on Lakanal's report. See the Expose Sommaire
des Travaux de Lakanal, p. 135.
t M. Lorain, in his Tableau de I' Instruction Primaire,
an official work of the highest importance, in which he gives
the result of the reports of 190 inspectors, who visited all
our schools in 1833, has no expressions strong enough to
mark the abject and wretched condition of our schoolmas-
ters. He states (p. 60) that some only make 50, 60, or 100
francs a year ! And besides, they have often to wait for
payment, and are often, indeed, not paid at all. They are
not paid in money, but each family puts aside the worst of
its harvest for the schoolmaster, when he proceeds on a Sun-
day to beg from door to door, with a wallet at his back. He is
by no means welcome to claim his little lot of potatoes, for
this is stintiny the pigs, kc. Since the publication of these
official reports, new schools have been established ; but ihe
condition of the existing schoolmasters has not been ame-
liorated. Let us hope that the Chimiber of Deputies will
grant, this year, the additional hundred francs asked in
vain last year.
DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF THE SCHOOLMASTER.
27
true, what's tliat to me ? The schoohnaster is
Fi'ance, the Frere is Rome, is the foreigner, the
enemy. Read their books, trace their habits,
their relations. Flatterers of the university, and
all Jesuits at heart.
I have spoken elsewhere of the servitude of the
priest. They are great, worthy of compassion.
The serf of Rome, the serf of his bishop, and,
besides, almost always in a position which gives
his superior, thoroughly aware how he stands,
a lien upon him. Well ! this priest, this serf, is
the tyrant of the schoolmaster. The latter is not
his subordinate legally ; but he is his valet. His
wife, mother of a family, pays her court to
madame, the housekeeper of monsieur the cure', to
the preferred and influential penitent. This wo-
man, with her children, and with all her struggles
to bring them up, perceives that a schoolmaster on
ill terms with the parson is a lost man ! . . . They
do not go round abi)ut to ruin him ; they do not
lose time in calling him a blockhead — no, he is a
drunkard, a profligate, a . His cliildren,
coming, alas ! year after year, vainly testify to the
correctness of his morals. The Bi-others alone
have morals. A few little actions, indeed, are
from time to time brought against them ; but how
soon hushed up !
Servitude ! heavy servitude ! I find it whether
tracing upwards or downwards, at every stage,
crusliing the worthiest, the humblest, the most
deserving !
I am not speaking here of hierarchical and
legitimate dependence, of obedience to the natural
superior. I speak of that other oblique, indirect
independence, which, proceeding from a higher
station, descends downvvards, which presses heavily,
penetrates, enters into details, which inquires,
pries, seeks to govern even the very soul.
Grand difference between the shopkeeper and
the public servant ! The first, as we have already
said, is condemned to lie, even about the smallest
objects, for his external interests ; as regards his
soul, he often preserves its independence. It is
precisely on this side that the public servant is
attacked : he is made uneasy about the things of
the soul, and at times is warned that he must lie
both as regards his political and his religious faith.
The wisest work hard to get themselves for-
gotten. They shun living and thinking, pretend
to be nothing, and play their game so well tiiat
at last they have no need of pretending ; they
have become what they strive to appear. Our
public servants, — who are, however, the eyes and
arms of France, aim at seeing no more, at giving
no moi'e signs of life. A body with such members
must be sick indeed.
Is the unhappy man free, at the expense of this
self-annihilation ? Not always. The more he
shrinks and draws back, the more is asked of him.
He is asked for what are called proofs of zeal,
positive services. He may command promotion if
he will make liimself useful, give information
touching so and so. . . . " Is your colleague, now, for
instance, is your colleague a dependable person ?"
Behold our man, now, distressed, sick at heart.
He returns home full of thought. Tenderly pressed,
he confesses that. . . . And where think you at
this gravely critical moment he finds support ?
From his family I Seldom.
Sad and hard thing to say, but which must be
said, the man of the present day is not corrupted
by the world, he knows it too well ; nor by his
friends . . . for who lias friends ? . . . No ; his
most frequent corrupters are his own family. An
exemplary wife, uneasy about her children,
will instigate her husband, in the hope of ad-
vancing him in the world, to the basest meanness.
A devoted mother thinks it a straightforward mat-
ter that her son should make his fortune by com-
pliance. The end sanctifies all : how sin in serving
a good cause ? . . , What is man to do when he
encounters temptation in the bosom of his own
family, who ought to shield him from it I when
vice comes to him recommended by virtue, by filial
obedience, by respect to paternal authority ?
This is the grave side of our morals; I know no
gloomier one.
Still I will never believe that baseness, even so
recommended, that servileness and Jesuitism, w-ill
triumph in France. Repugnance for all that is
false and treacherous is insurmountable in this
noble country. The mass is good; judge notof it
by the scum which rises to the surface. This
mass, though fluctuating, has in it a power which
renders it secure— the sentiment of military honour
constantly renewed by our heroic legend. See that
man on the point of giving way check himself and
stop without one's being able to divine the cause —
he has felt pass by his face the invincible spirit of
the heroes of our wars, the wind of the time-
honoured flag ! . . .
Ah ! my sole hope is in it ! May that flag and
the France of the army save France! May our
glorious army, on which the eyes of the world are
fixed*, keep itself pure ! May it be iron against
the enemy and steel against corruption ! May the
si)irit of police never find i;s way into it ! May it
preserve a horror of traitors, of unworthy ofiers, of
underhand means of advancement !
What a trust is in the hands of these young sol-
diers! what responsibility of the future ! On the
day of the last combat between civilization and bar-
barism, (and who knows that it may not be to-
morrow?) the Judge must find them irreproachable,
their swords pure, their bayonets sparkling without
a stain ! Each time I see them pass, my heart stirs
within me : " Here, only here, march together,
force and mind, valour and right, two things sepa-
rate over all the earth. If the world is saved by
war, you alone will save it. . . Sacred bayonets of
France, that light which hovers over you, which no
eye can sustain — watch that nothing dims its
brightness !"
CHAPTER VII.
SERVITUDES OF THE RICH AND OF THE BOURGEOIS 'f.
The only people that has a positive ai-my is one
which counts for nothing in Europe. This phe-
nomenon is not sufticientiy accoujited for by the
weakness of a ministry or of a government ; but
* If atrocities have been committed by our armies, tliey
were oriiered. Be the guiit on tliose who gave such orders.
We may observe, however, that our papers, to further party
interests, are too apt to give credit to the calumnious inven-
tions of tlie English.
+ As we have no exact equivalents for the terms "bour-
geois " and •' bourgeoisie," — our "citizen" and " middle class "
not expressing the same thing,— 1 have retained the French
words. Besides, their meaning will be gathered from the
context. — Xranslator.
28
THE PEOPLE.
springs unfortunately from a more general cause —
from tlie decline of the governing class, a very new
yet very worn-out class — the bourgeoisie.
To make myself better understood, I must go
some way back.
The glorious bourgeoisie which dashed in pieces
the middle-ages, and effected our first revolution,
in the fourteenth century, had this of peculiar in it,
that it was a rapid initiation of the people into the
nobility *. It was less a class than a means of
transition, a step. Then, having done its work, a
new nobility and a new monarchy, it dropped its
mobility, stereotyped itself, and remained a class — a
class, indeed, too often ridiculous. The bourgeois
of the seventeenth and eighteenth century is a
bastard being, whom nature seems to have checked
in its imperfect development, a mixed being, un-
pleasing to see, who reminds you neither of the
classes above or below, who can neither walk nor
fly, but who pleases himself, and who struts about
on the strength of his pretensions.
Our actual bourgeoisie, born of the brief space
of the Revolution, did not encounter, on starting
up, any nobles over its head. So much the more
did it seek to erect itself into a class at once. It
took up a fixed position at its birth ; so fixed a
one, that it idly fancied it could draw an aristo-
cracy out of its own bosom — you might as well
talk of improvising an antiquity. This creation
turned out, as might have been foreseen, not an-
tique, but withered and decrepit -f*.
Although the bourgeoisie ask no more than to be
a class apart, it is not easy to define the limits of
this class, to say where it begins, where it ends.
All who are included in it are not in easy circum-
stances, there are many poor bourgeois J. In the
country, the same man is a workman here, bourgeois
there, because he has property there. Hence,
thanks to God, we cannot strictly oppose the bour-
geois to the people, as some do, which would be
nothing less than creating two nations. Our small
country proprietors, whether called bourgeois or
not, are people, and the very heart of the people.
Whether we extend or contract this denomina-
tion, the point of importance to i*eniark is, that the
bourgeoisie, which for fifty years took the initiative
in action upon itself, seems at the present day pa-
ralyzed and incapable of action. It was apparently
to be renewed by quite a recent class; I mean by
* The transition took place, as is known, through the
noblesse of the courts (noblesse de robe). But, what is not
80 well known, is the facility with which this noblesse be-
came miliiary in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
+ Ancient France had three classes; new France has two
— the people and the tiourgeoisie.
X Observe attentively how the humbler classes use this
word, and you will find that it corresponds, in their minds,
less to riches than to a certain portion of independence and
leisure, to the absence of uneasiness about daily bread. A
workman, who earns his five francs a day, will readily address
as Mon Bourgeois, thj starving aimuitant who has but his
three hundred francs a year from the funds, or from some
small property, and who walks about in a seedy black coat
in the very heart of January. If a sense of security be the
essence of the bourgeois, must we comprehend under the
term those who never know whether they are rich or poor,
tradesmen, and others who seem more secure, but who, to
purchase a situation, have made themselves the slaves of
the capitalist ? If they be not really bourgeois, they are yet
affixed to the same class by interest, by fears, and the fixed
idea of peace at any cost.
the manufacturing class, born of 1815, strengthened
by the struggles of the Restoration, and which,
more than any other, brought about the revolution
of July. More French, perhaps, than the bour-
geoisie properly so called, it is bourgeois through
its interests, and dares not budge. The bourgeoisie
neither will nor can make a move, but has lost
the power of moving itself, or impelling others.
Half a century, then, has sufficed to see it issue
from the people, rise by its own activity and
energy, and, suddenly, in the midst of its triumph,
collapse upon itself. There is no other instance of
so rapid a decline.
It is not we who say this, but itself. The saddest
confessions escape it upon its own decline, and that
of France, which it is dragging down with it.
Ten years ago, a minister said, in the hearing of
many persons, " France will be the first of the
secondary powers." This, which was then an
humble prophecy, in the state to which things have
now come, seems almost an ambitious one. So
rapid has been the descent.
As rapid internally, as externally. The progress
of the evil is marked by the discoui-agement of
those even who profit by it. They can hardly feel
interested in a game in which no one hopes longer to
deceive anybody. The actors are as wearied al-
most as the spectators. They yawn with the
public ; sick of themselves, and of feeling theii*
decline.
One of them, a man of talent, wrote some years
since, that great men were no longer required, tiiat
henceforward they could be done without. The
saying hit the time. Only, if he writes again, he
must extend it, and prove this time that mediocre
men, secondary talents, are not indispensable, and
that they can be done without as well.
Ten years ago, the press aspired to influence.
It has given this notion up. To speak but of litera-
ture only, it has felt that the bourgeoisie, — and the
bourgeoisie alone read — (the people read little),
no longer wanted art. So it has been enabled,
without any one's making the least complaint, to
retrench two expensive things, art and criticism.
It has addressed itself to the improvisateurs, the
joint-stock novelists, and then, only keeping their
name, to craftsmen of a lower rank.
The general depreciation is less felt, because it
has taken place all together. All sinks; the relative
level is the same.
Who would say, quiet as we are, that we have
been so noi.sy a people ? The ear grows used to it
by degrees, and the voice tuo. The diapason
changes. He who fancies he bawls out, whispers.
The only sound which breaks the general silence
more than usual, conies from the stock exchange.
He who hears it on the spot, and who witnesses
the tumult, would readily conclude that this cur-
rent must stir up the very depths of the vast sleep-
ing marsh of the bourgeoisie. A mistake. It is
doing too much wrong, too much honour to the
vast bourgeois mass, to infer so much activity
in it for material interests *. It is exceedingly
* France, with the exception of its English fits (like Law's
bubble, and this madness of stock-jobbing), and which are
of rare occurrence, has not a shopkeeping soul. This is
seen in the readiness with wh'ch those who, at first, seem
the most eager in the pursuit of fortune, generally stop early
and give it up. The Frenchman who has amassed in trade,
or otherwise, an income of a few thousand francs, thinks
egotistical, it is true, but addicted to routine, and
inert. Some brief accesses apart, it usually holds
by its first gains, which it feai-s to endanger. The
ease with which this class resigns itself to medio-
crity in everything, especially in the country, is
incredible. It has little ; it acquired that little
but yesterday ; provided it can retain that little,
it resigns itself to live without enterprise, without
tliought*.
That which characterised the ancient bourgeoisie,
but which is wanting in the new, is, most of all, the
consciousness of security.
The bourgeoisie of the two last centuries, firmly
seated on the basis of fortunes of long standing, on
legal and financial offices, which were looked upon
as properties, on the monopoly of the large-trading
corporations, &c. thought itself as secure in France
as the king. Its ridiculous side was pride, an
awkward imitation of the great. This effort at
rising higher in the scale of society than was within
its powei', is marked by the emphasis and inflation
which characterize most of the monuments of the
seventeenth century.
The i"idiculous side of tlie new bourgeoisie is
that contrast between its militai'y antecedents and
the actual terror which it is at no pains to conceal,
and whicli it expresses on all occasions with sin-
gular simplicity. If only tlu'ee men begin talking
of wages in the street, and ask the contractor,
grown rich by their labour, for a rise of but a sou,
the bourgeois takes the alarm, and cries out for
help.
There was, at least, more consistency in the
boiu-geois of the former day. He admired himself
in his privileges, sought to enlarge them, and
looked upwards. Our present bourgeois looks
downwards, sees the crowd mount behind him, as
he has mounted, and does not like their aspii'ation ;
so recoils and fixes himself by the side of " the
powers that be." Does he frankly confess his retro-
grade tendencies to himself ? Rarely. His past life
makes him shrink from it. He almost always re-
mains in this contradictory position : liberal by prin-
ciple, selfish by habit, wishing and not wishing. If
there I'emain any of the Frenchman within to chide
him, he appeases it by the reading of some inno-
cently grumbling paper, pacifically warlike.
Most administrations, it nmst be owned, have
himself rich, and retires. The Englishman, on the con-
trary, sees in the riches he has heaped together a means of
growing richer, and goes on working till death. He is
cliained to the oar, absorbed in his occupation, only he
pursues it on a larger scale. He does not exiierience the
want of leisure which would leave his life at his own free
disposal.
Tims it happens that there are very few rich men in
France, our foreign capitalists apart; and almost all these
said rich men would be poor in England. From our rich
men, too, you must deduct a certain number, who make a
good figure, and whose means are either mortgaged, or still
uncertain and hypothetical.
* I know a rather considerable town, near Paris, which
contains some hundreds of independent men of small in-
comes, of from four to six thousand francs each, who never
dream of exceeding this, who do nothing, read nothing,
scarcely the paper, take an interest in nothing, never visit,
and hardly know one another. The intoxication of tli.-
stock exchange is never felt by them, but, unhappily, it
spreads lower down, among the thrifty of the humbler
classes, even of the country, where the peasant has not even
a paper to enlighten him on the subject of this knavery.
speculated on this sad progression of fear, which,
in the long run, is no other than the hastening of
moral death. They have thought the dead easier
to deal with than the living. To increase their
dread of the people, they have been constantly
showing these alarmed folk two Medusa's heads,
which have at the last changed them into stone —
the Reign of Terror, and Communism.
History has never yet entered into a searching
examination of this unique phenomenon — the Reign
of TeiTor; which, most assuredly, could be resus-
citated by no man, by no party. All that I can
say about it here is, that behind this popular phan-
tasmagoria, they who worked the puppets, our
great terrorists, were by no means men of the
people, but bourgeois, nobles, men of cultivated,
subtle, wayward minds, sophists and schoolmen.
As to Communism, a subject to which I shall re-
turn, a word is enough, the last country in the
world in which the rights of propei-ty will be swept
away, is France. If, as one of that school defined
it, " property is nothing else than theft," we have
twenty-five millions of thieves who will never let
go their hold.
These two things, however, are none the less
excellent machines for frightening those who are
well off, for inducing them to act against their prin-
ciples, and for stripping them of all principle. Such
is the excellent use the Jesuits and their friends
make of communism, especially in Switzerland.
Each time that the friends of liberty are about to
gain ground, there is discovered to a nicety, and
published with great to-do, some new atrocity, some
nefarious plot, which horrifies all good proprietors,
Protestant as well as Catholic, Berne as well as
Fribourg.
No passion remains stationary; fear less so than
any other. Grow it will. Now, there is this qua-
lity in fear, that it always goes on to magnify its
object, and to weaken the sickly imagination of the
person who fears. Each day brings a new cause of
distrust. This idea seems dangerous to-day; that
man, or that class, to-morrow. One shuts oneself
up more and more, baiTicades and walls up doors
and mind, no more daylight, not even a cranny for
the day to enter by.
No more contact with the people. Henceforward
the bourgeois knows them only by the police re-
ports. He sees them in his servant, who robs him
and laughs at him. He sees them, through the win-
dows, in the drunken man who passes along there,
bawling, falling, rolling in the mud. He does not
know that, after all, the poor devil is a worthier
fellow than the poisoners, wholesale and retail, who
have made him in this sad state.
Rude labours make rude men and rude words;
The voice of the man of the people is rough ; he
has been a soldier, and ever affects military energy.
Hence the bourgeois concludes that his habits are
those of violence, and he is usually mistaken. In
nothing is the improvement of the age more visi-
ble than in this. But the other day, when an armed
force suddenly entered the carpenters' lodge, broke
open their chest, and seized their papers and poor
savings, did we not see these brave men restrain
their passions, and appeal to the laws ?
The rich man is, generally, the man who has
grown rich, the poor man of yesterday. Yesterday
he was himself the workman, the soldier, the pea-
sant, whom he avoids to-day. I can understand
30
THE PEOPLE.
how the grandson, born rich, can forget all this ;
but to forget oneself in the space of a man's life,
in tiie space of thirty or forty years, is inexplicable.
For pity's sake, ye men of warlike times, who have
seen the enemy a hundred times, fear not to face
your poor countrymen, whom they tell you to
dread. What are they doing ? They are beginning
to-day as you began. He who is passing there, is
yourself of a younger day. ... Is not that strip-
ling conscript there, singing the Marseillaise as he
trips along, yourself, setting off, a mere child, in
'92 ? Does not that officer from Africa, full of am-
bition, and breathing of war, call to your mind
1804, and the camp of Boulogne ? The tradesman,
the workman, the small manufacturer, are singu-
larly like those who, about 1820, clomb to fortune
along with yourself.
These very men, like you, will rise, if they can,
and, most probably, by better means, being boi'n
in a better time. They will be gainers, you will be
none the poorer. . . . Away with the false notion,
that one can only gain by taking from others.
Each rising wave of people brings with it a wave
of new riches.
Know you the danger of isolating yourselves, of
shutting yourselves up so well ? You only shut up
the void. By excluding men and ideas, one dimi-
nishes and impoverishes oneself. 'Tis enclosing
oneself in one's own class, in one's own petty circle
of habits, where intellect and personal energy are
no longer needed. The door is safely locked ; but
there is no one witlim. . . . Poor rich ! If thou
art thyself no longer anything, what is it that thou
art so intent on guarding ?
Let us open this soul; and see together with her,
if she have any recollection, what she had, what is
left. The j'oung elasticity of the Revolution ? Alas !
who can find the faintest trace of it ? The warlike
force of the Empire, the libei-al aspiration of the
Restoration, will equally be sought in vain.
We have seen this, our man of the present day,
growing less at each step which seemed to elevate
him. Peasant, he had sense, morals, sobriety, and
thrift ; workman, he was kind-hearted to his fel-
lows, and the support of his family ; manufacturer,
he was active, energetic, animated by the patrio-
tism of industry, to make head against foreign in-
dustry. He has left all this behind on his road,
and has brought nothing in its place. His house
is full, his cotiers are full, 'tis only his soul that is
empty.
Life is lighted and kindled by life, is extin-
guished by isolation. The more it mingles with
lives different from its own, the more it is answer-
able for other existences, the stronger, happier,
and more fecund is its own existence. Descend in
the animal scale down to those poor beings which
leave you in doubt whether they are plants or
animals, you enter solitude. These wretched crea-
tures have scarcely any connexion with others.
Unintelligent egotism 1 On what side does the
apprehensive class of the rich and bourgeois cast
its eyes ? With what is it going to ally and asso-
ciate itself? Precisely with what is most change-
able of all ; with the political powers that come and
go ; with the capitalists, who, on the day of revo-
lution, will take up their portfolios and cross the
strait. . . . Men of property, know you not that
which will not budge any more than the land
itself ? . . 'Tis the people. Leau ou it.
The safety of France, and your safety, ye men of
wealth, depends on your not fearing the people, on
your going amongst them, on your scouting the
fables told you, and which have no foundation in
reality. . . . You must understand one another,
unlock your mouths, your hearts also, and speak —
as men amongst themselves.
You will go on sinking, growing weaker, always
declining, if you do not summon around you and
adopt the strong and the capable, wherever they
may be. I do not allude to capacity in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. An assembly which already
contains a hundred and fifty lawyers, does not want
tlii'ee hundred. The men brought up by our
modern schoolmen will not renew the world. . . .
No; this is reserved for the men of instinct, of in-
spiration without cultivation, or possessing other
cultivations (foreign from our modes of thinking,
and which all cannot appreciate), for those whose
alliance will breathe life into the man of study, and
practical sense into the man of business ; of which,
indisputably he has stood in need these later times,
as is only too apparent by the state of France.
What I have to hope from the rich and from the
bourgeoisie towards large, frank, generous associa-
tion, I cannot say: they are sick indeed. It is not
easy to return from such a distance. But I confess
it; I have still hope in their sons. Those young
people, such as I see them in our schools, before
my chair, have better tendencies. They have ever
heartily welcomed every word in favour of the
people. May they do more ; may they stretch forth
the hand to them, and early form an alliance with
them for the common i-egeneration. May these
rich youths never forget that they have to bear
about with them a heavy burden, the life of their
fathers, who, in so brief a moment, have risen, en-
joyed, decayed ; that they are aweary at their birth,
and that, young as they are, their need is great to
grow younger, by imbibing the popular feeling.
Their greatest strength lies in their being still close
to the people, their root, from which they have
but just sprouted up. Ah ! may tliey turn into this
root with all their sympathies and heart, and regain-
a little of that powerful sap which since eighty-nine,
has constituted the genius, the wealth, the strength
of France.
Young and old, we are tired — why should
we not confess it ? — at the close of this laborious
day's work which has been half a century ? Even
they who have traversed, as I have done, diverse
classes, and who, through all sorts of trials, have pre-
served the fecund instinct of the people, have not
the less lost by the way in internal struggles, great
part of their force. . . . 'Tis late, I feel it to be
late, the evening cannot be long of coming, —
" And broader shadows from the mountains fall."
Hither then, young and strong. Come, workmen,
we open our arms to you : revive us with a new
warmth ; let the world, let science recommence
again.
For my part, my trust and hope is that my
science, my cherished study, history, will go on
gathering new life from this popular life, and by
the aid of these new-comers, will become the grand
and salutary thing I dreamed of. From the people
shall issue the historian of the people.
Certainly he will not love this people more than I.
All my past life, my true couuti-y, my home, ray
SUMMARY OF THE PREVIOUS CONSIDERATIONS.
31
heart are among them. . . . But many things have
hindered me from imbibing their most fecund ele-
ment. The abstract nature of the education of the
day long dried me up. It took me long years to
efface the sophist which had been created within
me : I am only come to myself by disengaging
myself from this foreign accessary ; I have only
arrived at a knowledge of myself, by a negative
process. And this is the reason that though always
sincere, always an impassioned lover of the true,
I have not attained the ideal of grand simplicity,
which I have had present to my mind. ... Go
then, young man, to thee belong the gifts which I
have been denied ". Son of the people, and at a
shorter remove from it, thou wilt be the first to
tread the ground of its history with its colossal
strength and inexhaustible sap. My rivulets will
rush of themselves to lose themselves in thy tor-
rents.
I gift thee with all I have done. . . . Thou wilt
gift me with oblivion: may my imperfect history be
absorbed in a worthier monument, where science
and inspiration may blend into harmony, and where,
amidst vast and penetrating researches, one may
everywhere feel the breath of great multitudes and
the fecund soul of the people !
CHAPTER VIII,
REVIEW OP THE FOREGOING PART.-
TO THE SECOND.
-INTRODUCTION
Reviewing this long social scale indicated in
such few pages, a crowd of ideas and painful senti-
ments, a world of sadness besets me. ... So many
physical pains! But how many more moral suffer-
ings ! . . . Few are unknown to me; I know, I feel,
I have had my full share. ... I must, neverthe-
less, dismiss both my feelings and my recollections,
and follow through this cloud my little light.
And, first, my light, which will never deceive
me, is France. French feeling, the devotion of the
citizen to his native land, is my measure for judg-
ing these men, these classes; a moral, but a natural
measure as well. In every living thing, each part
draws its functions from its connexion with the
whole.
It is with nationality as with geology, the heat is
below. Descend ; you will find that it increases.
In the inferior strata, it burns.
The poor love France, being indebted to her,
having duties towards her. The rich love her as
belonging to them, being indebted to them. The
patriotism of the first is the sentiment of duty ;
that of the last, the importunity and pretension
of a right.
The peasant, as we have said, has wedded France
in lawful wedlock; she is his wife for ever: he is one
with her. For the workman, she is his lovely mis-
tress: he has nothing, but he has France, her noble
past, her glory. He adores the grand unity, free
from local ideas. Miserable nmst he be, and en-
slaved by hunger and by work, when this senti-
ment is weakened within him ; extinguished, it
never is.
* But I must aid and prepare this young man before-
hand. And this is the reason that I continue my History
(of France). One book is the means of making another
better book.
The wretched slavery of interests increases i)ro-
portionally as we ascend to the maimfacturers, tlie
shopkeepers. They feel themselves in constant
peril, and walk as if on the tight rope. . . . Failure!
To avoid partial, they would risk a general failure.
. . . They made and unmade July.
And yet can we say that in this large class of
many millions of souls the sacred fire is extinct,
decidedly and irremediably ? No ; I would rather
incline to believe that the flame in them is in a
state of latent heat. Foreign rivalry, the English-
man, will hinder tlie spark from going out.
How chill, if I ascend higher ! It is like being
among the Alps. I reach the region of snow.
Moral vegetation gi-adually disappears, the flower
of nationality loses its hue. It is like a world
seized in one night with a sudden frost of selfish-
ness and fear. . . . Ascending a degree higher,
fear ceases, and I only encounter the pure selfish-
ness of the calculator who has no native land; I
meet not men, but cyphers. . . . True glacier, de-
serted by nature *. . . . I must descend ; the cold
is too much for me here, I cannot draw breath.
If, as I believe, love is life itself, there is little
life so high. It seems, that with regard to that
national sentiment which enables a man to amplify
his life with all the grand life of France, the more
one ascends towards the higher classes, the less
vitality one feels.
Is one indemnified by being less liable to suffer-
ings, freer, happier ? I doubt it. For instance,
I see that the large manufacturer, so far higher
than the miserable little rural proprietor, is like
hirn, and still more frequently than he, the slave
of the banker. I see that the petty shopkeeper,
who has exposed his savings to the hazards of
trade, and involves his family in these hazards (as
I have explained above), who withers with corrod-
ing cares, envy, and competition, is not nmch hap-
pier than the workman. The latter, if a single
man, if he can put by thirty sous for a rainy day,
out of his daily earnings of four francs, is, beyond
comparison, more light-hearted and more indepen-
dent than the shopkeeper.
The rich, it will be said, suffer only from their
own vices — but this alone is much. Still to this
must be added weariness, moral despondency, the
sensations of a man who feels that he had better
things within, who preserves life enough to mark
how life is sinking, and to note in lucid moments
how he glides into the meannesses and follies of
littleness of mind. ... To sink, to be no more
able to rise by an effort of the will, what more
• These glaciers do not present the impartial indifreren,ce
of those of the Alps, which only acrumu'ate fecundating
waters to distribute Ihem indifferently to the nations. The
Jews, despite of all that is said, liave a country. They
operate everywhere, but their root is in the land of gold.
Now that '"armed peace," that fixed war which gnaws into
Europe, has thrown into their hands the funds of all states,
what can they love ? The land of slatu quo, England.
What can they hate ? The country of movement, France.
. . . They have latterly imagined that they could kill her by
buying some score of men whom France denies. Another
fault :—tlirough vanity, through an exaf;g>^rated sentiment
of security, they have admitted kings of their band, have
allied themselves with the aristocracy, and so associated
themselves with political hazards. This is what their fathers,
the Jews of the middle age, would never have done. What
a falling off in Jewish wisdom !
32
THE PEOPLE.
wretched ? From the Frenchman to sink into the
cosmopoHte, into any man, and from man into the
mollusca !
What do I mean to say by all this — that the
poor man is happy, that all conditions are alike ;
" that there is a compensation ?" God defend nie
from maintaining so false a thesis, so calculated to
kill the heart, and confirm selfishness ! . . . See T
not, do I not know by experience, that physical
suffering, far from excluding moral suffering, is
generally allied to it — terrible sisters, who are so
well agreed to crush the poor ! . . . Mark, for
instance, the lot of the wife in the indigent quar-
ters of Paris. She seldom bi'ings a child into the
world exce[)t to die ; and finds in her material
wants an endless cause of moral pains.
In the moral, as in the physical, this class of
the community has, beyond all tlie rest, an ill pecu-
liar to itself — it has become singularly susceptible.
That man's ordinary ills have decreased, I believe;
history proves it. They have, however, decreased
in a finite proportion ; and sensibility has in-
creased in an infinite. Whilst the mind, enlai'ging,
was opening a new sphere to pain, the heart was
giving, through love, through family ties, new holds
to fortune. . . . Dear occasions of suffering, which
no one, assuredly, would sacrifice. . . . But how
much more uneasy have they rendered life ! We
no longer suffer from the present only ; but from
the future, from the possible. The soul, a prey to
pain beforehand, feels and has a presentiment of
coming ill, and sometimes of that which will never
come.
To fill up the measure of woe, this age of
extreme individual sensibility is precisely that in
which everything is done by collective means
which are least within individual influence. Ac-
tion, in all mechanical pursuits, is centralised
around some mighty power, and, will he nill he,
man is drawn into the whii'lwind. Of how little
import he himself is, what becomes in these vast
impersonal systems of his most cherished thoughts
and poignant griefs, alas ! who can tell ? . . . The
machine rolls on, immense, majestic, indifferent,
unconscious that its small wheels, which have to
bear such hard friction, are living men.
Do these animated wheels ply their functions
under one same impulse, know at least one an-
other ? Does their necessary intimacy of co-ope-
ration produce a moral intimacy ? ... In no de-
gree. 'Tis the strange mystery of this age ; the
very hours in which men act most together are,
perhaps, those in which their hearts are least
united. Never have the collective means, which
put thought in common, circulate and diffuse it,
been greater : never has isolation been more pro-
found.
To those who do not observe historically the
progress of the system which gives it birth, that
mystery remains iuexplicable. I have named this
system Machin'ism. Let me be allowed to recall
its origin.
The middle age laid down a formula of love,
and it ended but in hate. It consecrated in-
equality, injustice, which i-endered love impossible.
The violent re-action of love and of nature, which
is called the Renaissance, founded no new order,
and appeared disorder. Then tlie world, to which
order was a positive want, said, " Well ! let us not
love ; the experience of a thousand years lias been
enough. Let us seek order and power in the
union of powers. We will find machines which
will keep men together without love, which will
frame, lock them in so tightly, shall so nail, rivet,
screw them up, that, all the while detesting one
another, they shall yet act together." And, then,
administrative machines were made once moi-e
analogous to those of the old Roman empire,
bureaucracy after the Colbert pattern, armies after
that of Louvois. These machines had the advan-
tage of employing man as a regular power ; of
employing life — minus its caprices and inequalities.
Yet are they still men, and preserve something of
their nature. The marvel of machinism would be
to do without men. Let us seek forces, which once
put in motion by us, shall act as we, like the wheels
of clockwork.
Put in motion by us ? This is still man, and this
is a defeat. Let nature furnish not only the ele-
ments of the machine, but the moving power. . . .
'Tis then that were created those iron workmen
which could spin, weave, work in every imaginable
combination with a hundred thousand arms, a hun-
dred thousand teeth, acquiring strength, like
Antseus, from the bosom of their mothei', from
nature, the elements, the water-fall, or else from
the water which, made captive and expanded into
vapour, animates and refreshes them with its
mighty sigh.
Political machines — to render our social acts
unifoi-mly aristocratic, and enable us to dispense
with patriotism ; industrial machines, which, when
once created, multiply to infinity monotonous pro-
ducts, and which, by the art of a day, dispense with
our being artists every day. ... So far well, there
is not much seen of man. Machinism, however,
wills more ; man is not yet converted into a ma-
chine.
He preserves his solitary reflections, his philo-
sophical meditations, the pure thought of the true.
There he cannot be reached ; except a borrowed
scholasticism draw him out of himself to enmesh
him in its formulas. Once he shall have set foot
on this wheel, which turns in vacuity, — the machine
for thinking, racked and toothed into the political
machine, will whirl round triumphantly, and will be
named Political Philsophy.
Fancy still remains free, vain poesy which loves
and creates at its pleasure. . . . Useless move-
ment ! miserable expenditure of strength ! . . .
Are the objects which fancy pursues at random, so
numerous that one cannot, by diligent classification,
strike a mould for each class, into which we may
run, as the occasion demands, any given romance,
drama, or work according to order. Men will then
not be required for literary labour ; no more pas-
sion, no morecaprice of fancy. . . . The English econo-
mists have dreamed, as the beau-ideal of indus-
trialism, of one single machine, one single man to
put it together and keep it going— how much more
glorious the triumph of machinism, to have reduced
to machinery the winged world of fancy !
Let us sum up this history : — The state, minus
one's native land ; industry and literature, minus
art ; philosophy, minus examination; humanity,
minus man.
How be surprised at the world's groaning and
suffocating within this air-pump. It has disc<jvered
a means of doing without that which is its soul, its
life; I mean love.
MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN ALL CLASSES.
33
Deceived by the middle age, which promised
union, and broke its word, the world has renounced
the idea, and, in its discouragement, has sought the
art of not loving.
Machines, (I except not the most perfect, whether
manufacturing or administrative,) have furnished
man, amongst numei'ous advantages*, with one un-
fortunate faculty, that of combining forces without
combining hearts, of co-operating without loving, of
acting and living together without knowing each
other — the moral power of association has lost all
that mechanical concentration has gained.
Savage isolation, even in co-operation; ungrate-
ful contact, without wislies, without warmth, and
which one feels only in the severity of the friction.
The result is not, as might be imagined, indiffer-
ence, but antipathy and hate ; not the simple
negation of society, but its contrary — society actu-
ally labouring to become unsociable.
Here, before my eyes ; here, in my heart, is the
grand review of our miseries which the reader has
assisted at along with me. Well ! I would affirm
on oath, that of all these most real miseries,
which I do not extenuate, the worst, still, is the
misery of mind. By this, I mean the incredible
ignorance in which we live of each other; practical
men as well as speculative. And the principal
cause of this ignoi'ance is that we do not think we
have any need of knowing one another. Innumer-
able mechanical means of acting, without soul, dis-
pense with our knowing what man is, with our see-
ing him in any other point of view than as power,
as a cypher. . . . Cypher ourselves, an abstract
thing, disembarrassed of vital action by the agency
of machinism, we feel ourselves daily sinking and
falling to zero.
Hundreds of times have I remarked the perfect
ignorance in which each class lives of the other,
neither seeing nor wishing to see.
For instance, how difficult is it for us, of cul-
tivated minds, to recognize the good there is in the
people ! We blame them for countless things
which depend, almost by fatality, on their situation
— old or dirty dress, excess after abstinence, gross
language, rough hands, and a thousand charges of
the kind. . . . Why, what would become of us
were their hands less rough ? . . . We stop at ex-
ternals, at pitiful points of fonn, and we do not see
the good, the great heart which is often beneath.
On their side, they do not suspect that an ener-
getic soul may inhabit a feeble body. They laugh
at the sickly life led by the studious. He is, in
their eyes, an idler. They have no idea of the
power of reflection, of meditation, of the force of
calculation decupled by patient thought. All supe-
riority not gained by war seems to them unde-
* I, by no means, intend to dispute these advantages
(See above, p. 15). Who would wish to return to days of im-
potence, when man was without machinery?
servedly gained. How often have I seen with a
smile that the cross of the Legion of Honour
seemed to them out of j)lace on the bi-east of a
pale, dwarfed, anxious looking man. . . .
Yea : there is misunderstanding. They misun-
derstand the might of study, of persevering reflec-
tion by which inventions arc made. We misunder-
stand the instinct, the inspiration, the energy which
make heroes.
Take it for granted, this is the grand evil of the
world. We hate, we despise each other ; that is,
we do not know each other.
The partial remedies that may bo applied are
good undoubtedly ; but the essential remedy is a
general one. It is the soul we should cure.
The poor man supposes, that by binding the rich
man by such or such a law all is done, and the
world will go on well. The rich man thinks that
by recalling the poor man to such or such a re-
ligious form, extinct for two centuries, he strength-
ens society. . . . Splendid topical remedies! They
apparently imagine that these fornmlas, political
or religious, possess a certain cabalistic power to
bind the world — as if all their power did not de-
pend on the response which they receive or do not
receive from the heart !
The evil is in the heart. Let the remedy be in
the heart. Throw aside your old nostrums. Open
your hearts and arms. . . . Ah ! they are brothers
after all. Have you forgotten it ? . . .
I do not say that such or such a form of associa-
tion may not be excellent. But fundamentals, not
forms, are the question. The most ingenious
forms will help you not if you are unsociable.
Of the men of study and reflection, and the men
of instinct, who will make the first advance ? We;
the men of study. The obstacle with us (repug-
nance? indolence? indifference?) is frivolous. With
them, the obstacle is truly grave ; it is the fatality
of ignorance ; it is the sufi"ering which closes and
withers the heart.
No doubt the people reflect ; and, often, more
than we. Nevertheless, their characteristic is the
instinctive powers, which equally affect thought
and activity. The man of the people is eminently
the man of instinct and of action.
The divorce of the world ai'ises principally from
the absurd opposition established at the present
day, in this age of machinism, between instinct and
reflection ; and which springs from the contempt of
the latter for the instinctive faculties, which she
thinks she can do without.
I must, then, explain what instinct and inspira-
tion ax'e, and lay down their law. Follow me, I
pray you, in this research. It is the condition on
which my subject depends. The political city will
not know itself in itself, will not recognize its evils
and its remedies, until it shall have viewed itself in
the mirror of the moi-al city.
34
THE PEOPLE.
PART THE SECOND.
OF ENFRANCHISEMENT BY LOVE. — NATURE.
CHAPTER L
THE INSTINCT OF THE PEOPLE ; A STUHr HITHERTO
NEGLECTED.
At my outset in tliis vast and difficult research, I
am conscious of one thing, which is far from encou-
raging— I start alone, and shall meet no one to aid
me. Alone ! I will not the less go forward, full
of courage and of hope.
Noble writers, of aristocratic genius, and who
had been accustomed to paint the manners of the
higher classes, have bethought themselves of the
people, and have undei'taken, out of their benevo-
lence, to bring the people into fashion. They have
quitted their drawing-rooms, descended into the
street, and asked the passers-by where the people
lived. They have been directed to the bagnios,
prisons, and haunts of vice.
From this mistake has followed a most distressing
consequence. They have produced an effect the
exact reverse of that which they desired. They
have selected, painted, narrated, in order to inter-
est us in the people, things which must naturally
alienate and alarm. "What! are these the peo-
ple ?" cries out with one voice the timid race of
the bourgeois. " Quick, increase the police, arm
ourselves ; close our doors, bar them."
It happens, on examination, that these artists,
grand dramaturgists above all, have painted, under
the name of the people, a very limited class, whose
life, all accidents, violences, and assaults, offered an
easy means of attaining the picturesque, and suc-
cess in the terrible.
Grave writers on crime, political economists,
painters of manners, have all, almost exclusively
directed their attention to an exceptional people
to a class unclassed, which terrifies us
yearly with the progress of crime, with the num-
ber of relapses. They are a well known people,
who, thanks to the publicity of our tribunals, to
the conscientious slowness of our forms of proce-
dure, arrest, with us, an attention, which they ob-
tain in no other country in Europe. The secresy
of justice in Germany, its rapidity in England, do
not allow of their criminals, who are either buried
in prison, or transported, being brought into full
relief. England, twice or thrice richer than
France in treasures of the kind, does not display
her wounds. Here, on the contrary, no ckss ob-
tains the honours of a completer ])ublicity.
Strange element of the community, which lives
at the expense of the others, and which is not the
less watched by them with interest. It has its
paper.?*, devoted to recording of its acts, arraying
its sentiments, to making it intelligent and, aftect-
ing. It has its heroes, its illustrious warriors,
whom every one knows by name, and who perio-
dically visit our assizes to relate thi-ir campaigns.
This chosen tribe, which enjoys almost a mono-
* Papers are published in Paris exclusively devoted to
reports of the proceedings in tlie police courts, &c.
poly of sitting to the painters of the people, is
principally recruited from the mob of our large
towns. No class couti'ibutes more to it than the
manufacturing.
Here, again, our criminal writers have led
opinion. It is after them, and by their inspira-
tion, that the politico-economists have studied
what they called the people. They have considered
the working class, and not especially the manufac-
turing working class, to be the people. Now, this
way of handling the subject, which would not be
out of place in England, where the manufacturing
population foi-ms two-thirds of the whole, is singu-
larly so in France, a great agricultural nation,
where the same class does not occupy a sixth part
of the population *. It is a numerous class, but
still a small minority. They who go to it for their
models, have no right to write underneath, " This
is a portrait of the people."
Examine closely this witty and corrupt mob of
our lai'ge cities, which so absorbs the attention of
the observer ; listen to their language, note down
their sallies, often most happy ones, and you will
discover one thing, which no one has yet remarked,
and which is, that these self-same beings, who,
perhaps, may be unable to read, are not the less,
after their way, men of highly cultivated minds.
Men who live together, and are always together,
are necessarily developed by contact alone ; by the
effect, as it were, of natural heat. They give
themselves an education, a bad one if you like,
but still an education. The sight alone of a great
town, where, without seeking to learn anything,
one picks up something every moment ; where,
in order to acquire a knowledge of a thousand
new things, you have only to go into the streets,
and use your eyes : why, this sight, this town,
is a school. They who live there do not live
an instinctive and natural life. They are culti-
vated men ; who observe for good or evil, and
reflect for good or evil. I find them often exceed-
ingly subtle, and evilly subtle. Here the effects of
refined cultivation are only too perceptible.
Would you see a creature contradicting nature,
directly opposed to all the instincts of infancy,
behold that artificial thing called the gamin of
Paris f. More artificial still, the last born of the
devil, is the frightful little man of London, who,
at twelve years of age, traffics, thieves, drinks gin,
and keeps his girl.
Artists, such, then, are your models. . . . The
fantastical, the exceptional, the monstrous, this is
that you seek ? Moralist, caricaturist ! What is,
now-a-days, the difference between the two ?
A man one day proposed an art of memory
to the great Themistocles. He answered bitterly,
" Give me rather an art of forgetting."
* And of this sixth, the manufacturing workman only
constitutes an inconsiderable part.
t Tliat this neglected child, tempted to ill, and. In every
way, of rankest growth, should produce any good quality —
wit, courage, is the marvel of the national characler.
CARICATURES OF THE PEOPLE BY LATE WRITERS.
36
May God grant me this art, so that I may now
forget all your monsters, your fantastic creations,
the revolting exceptions with which you bedaub
and confuse the subject I have undertaken to
handle. You go, eye-glass in hand, prying into the
gutters, and finding all manner of foul and filthy
things ; you bring them back to us, " Huzza !
huzza ! We have found the people !"
In order to interest us in the people, they show
them to us forcing the doors and picking the locks.
To picturesque narratives of the kind, they add
the profound theories by which the people, to
hearken to them, undertake to justify this war on
property. ... Of a verity, 'tis a terrible misfortune
for the people, over and above all their others, to
have these imprudent friends. These acts and
theories are none of the people's. The mass, no
doubt, is neither pure nor irreproachable ; but
if you wish to characterize them by the dominant
idea which occupies the minds of tlie vast majority,
it is that of accomplishing by labour, economy,
and the most respectable means, the immense
work which constitutes the strength of this coun-
try— the participation of all in landed property.
I have just now said I feel myself alone, and
should be saddened by the feeling, were I not
buoyed up by my faith and my hope. I find
myself weakened both in constitution and by my
previous labours, in face of this grand subject,
as if standing at the foot of a gigantic monument,
which I had to move with my own unassisted
strength. . . . Ah ! how disfigui-ed does it look,
covered with foreign aggregations, with mosses
and mildew, and sullied alike by the injuries of
the heavens, of earth, and of man ! . . . The pain-
ter, the man of art as art, comes, looks, and is
taken by — the mosses. ... I would fain tear them
away. This, thou painter that passest by, is not a
plaything of art — it is an altar !
I must dig into the ground, I must lay bare the
deep foundations of this monument. I see that
the inscription is buried, concealed far below. . . .
I have neither mattock, spade, nor pick ; my nails
will do.
Perchance, I may have the good fortune which
befel me ten years ago, when I discovei'ed two
curious monuments at Holyrood. I was in the
famous chapel, lung unroofed and exposed to rain
and mist, so that its tombs are covered with a
thick, greenish moss. The memory of the ancient
alliance (between France and Scotland), so un-
happily lost, made me regret the loss of the in-
scriptions on these tombs of the old fi-iends of my
native land. I mechanically removed the moss
from one of these stones, and read the epitaph of a
Frenchman — who first paved the streets of Edin-
burgh. My awakened curiosity led me to another
stone, with a death's head carved upon it. This
tomb, which had fallen on the ground, was itself
buried in a shroud of mouldiness. I scratched
with my nails, not having a knife about me, and
perceived that there had been a Latin inscription.
After long labour, I at last managed to decipher
four almost effaced words, words of grave import,
calculated to awaken thought, and which suggested
the idea of a tragic destiny : these words were the
foWowlug—" Liyibiis fdus, i2on re<jihns" Faithful to
the laws, not to kings * !
• Here is the whole of the inscription, as I read it, or
And I am still digging now. ... I would fain
dig to the bottom of the earth ; but this time it is
not a monument of hate and of civil war that I want
to exhume. ... On the contrary, I long to find,
by descending under this cold and sterile earth, the
depths where social warmth recommences, where
is kept the treasure of universal life, and where
will once more gush forth the dried up sources of
love.
CHAPTER II.
THE INSTINCT OP THE PEOPLE ; IMPAIUED, BUT
POWEHFUt.
Criticism catches me up at the first word, and im-
poses silence on me : — " You have filled some thirty
and odd pages in drawing up a long balance of social
miseries, of the servitudes attached to each con-
dition. We have waited patiently in the hope that
after the ills we should know the remedies. And
we expect you will meet such real, such positive,
such specified ills, by something else than vague
words, than a common-place sentimentality, than
moral and metaphysical remedies. Propose pre-
cise refoi-ms ; draw up for each abuse, a clear ex-
position of what ought to be changed, present it to
the Chambers. . . . Or, if you stop at complaints
and dreams, you would do better to return to your
middle age, which you should never have left."
Special remedies, methinks, have not been want-
ing. We have some fifty thousand of them in our
statutes (Bulletin des Lois); we are daily adding to
them, and I do not see that we are going on any
the better. Our legislative doctors treat each
symptom that appears here and there, as an iso-
lated and distinct disease, and think they can
remedy it by some given local application. They are
little sensible of the profound connexion between
all the parts of the social body, and that of all ques-
tions winch bear upon it f .
Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians, in the in-
fancy of science, had different j)hysicians for each
part of the body ; one devoted his attention to the
nose, a second to the ear, a third to the stomach,
&c. They never minded their remedies clashing;
each of them worked apart without troubling the
others ; if, each separate member separately cured,
the patient nevertheless died, that was his busi-
ness.
My notion of medicine, I confess to be far dif-
ferent. I have considered that before thinking of
any exterior and local remedy, it would not be
without its use to inquire into the internal disease
which produces all these symptoms. This disease,
as I conceive, is the coldness, the paralysis of the
heart, which produces want of sociability ; and this
want of sociability originates chiefly in the false
supposition that we can isolate ourselves with im-
punity, that we have no need of one another. The
rich and cultivated classes, especially, imagine that
they can gain nothing from the instinct of the
people, that their book-knowledge is equal to every-
thing, that they can learn nothing from the men of
action. To enlighten them I have been obliged to
thought that I read it, for it was almost effaced under the
moss of three centuries— fT. Harter. Legibus fidus, non re-
gibus. Janttar. 15S8.
t For iiisiance, they have not seen that the penitentiary
question depended on that of public instruction.
d2
36
THE PEOPLE.
explore all that there is of fecund in the instinctive
and active faculties ; a long process, but the only
legitimate one.
1 bring three things along with me to this exam-
ination. When I said just now that I was alone,
I was mistaken.
I. I bring the observation of the present, an obser-
vation the more important, as with me it is not only
external, but internal. Son of the people, I have
lived with them, I know them, they are myself.
How could I, when in the secret, be led astray with
the rest, and be imposed upon with the exception
for the rule, monstrosities for nature.
II. My second advantage is, that not having my
thoughts diverted by any given novelty in man-
ners or the strangeness of any special class, but
confining myself strictly to the mass in its legiti-
mate generality, I have no trouble in linking its
present state with its past. Changes are much
slower in the lower classes than in the upper. I
do not gaze at this mass as springing up suddenly
and by chance, like some ephemeral monster
vomited forth by the soil, but see it descending,
lawfully begotten, from the very dawn of history.
Life is less mysterious when we know the origin,
the ancestors, and the precedents; when we have
long watched the habits of the living being before,
as one may say, it was born,
III. Grasping this people thus both in its pre-
sent and its past, I see its necessary relations as they
affine with other peoples, in all decrees of civilization
or of barbarism. They reciprocally explain, and
form a mutual comment upon one another. To
any given question on the one, the other makes
reply. For instance, you consider such or such a
point in the habits of our mountaineers of the
Pyrenees and Auvergne as gross — I look upon it
as barbarism, and as such I comprehend it, I
classify it, and know its exact place and value in
the scale of general life. How many things, half
effaced from our national manners, seemingly in-
explicable and repugnant to all reason and sense,
I have learnt to see in their wholeness, in harmony
with the primitive inspiration, and to know to be
no other thing than the wisdom of a forgotten
world. . . . Poor shapeless fragments that I stum-
bled upon without a suspicion of what they were,
but which, mastered by some unknown presenti-
ment, I could not find it in my heart to pass by,
so picked them up and filled the folds of my cloak
with them , , . and which, on closer examina-
tion, with a religious thrill, I discovered to be
neither stone nor pebble, but the bones of my fa-
thers *.
In this small book, however, I have not been
able to enter upon this criticism of the pi-esent by
the past, and to develop it by the varied compari-
son of different ages and peoples. But it has,
nevertheless, enabled me to register and set in their
proper light the results at which I have arrived by
observation, reading, and information of every
kind.
" But," it may be objected to me, "has not this
very registration its danger ? Is not this plan of
criticism a rash (ine? Can the peojile, such as we now
see them, be identified in any serious respects with
their orhjins? Prosaic as we see them to be, can
they in the slightest degree recall those tribes
* Those who have read my Origines du Droit, will enter
into this.
which, in their very barbarism, preserve something
of the inspiration of poetry ? . . . We are far from
asserting that popular masses have been deficient
in fecundity and creative power. They do pro-
duce in the savage and barbarous state; the na-
tional songs of all people testify to the fact. They
produce when, transformed by cultivation, they
approximate to and blend with the higher classes.
" But that people which has neither primitive
inspiration nor cultivation ; that people which is
neither civilized nor savage ; that people which is
in an intermediate state, in which it is at the same
time both vulgar and rude — is not that people im-
potent 1 . . . The very savages, who have naturally
considerable elevation and poeti'y, turn with dis-
gust from our emigi-ants, the offspring of these
gross populations."
I do not dispute the state of depression, of physi-
cal, and at times of moral degeneration, into which
the people, especially the population of the towns,
is now sunk. The whole bulk of heavy labours,
the whole burthen which in ancient times fell upon
the slave alone, is at the present day distributed
amongst freemen of the lower classes. All share
in the miseries, the prosaic vulgarities, the foul-
nesses of slavery. Even the races born under the
happiest natural auspices, our races of the south
for instance, so full of life and song, are sadly bow-
ed down by labour. The worst is, that in these
days the soul is often as much bent as the shoulders
— misery, want, dread of the money-lender, of the
bailiff, what can be less poetical ?
The people have less poetry in themselves, and
find less in the woi'ld ai'ound them, which rarely
possesses that kind of poetry which they can appre-
ciate,— striking detail in the picturesque or in the
pathetic. Such poetry as this world has is of a
high order that exists in harmonies, often exceed-
ingly complicated, which an unaccustomed eye
cannot seize.
Man, poor and alone, surrounded by these im-
mense objects, these enormous collective powers,
which force him on without his understanding
them, feels himself feeble and humiliated. He has
none of the pride which rendered individual genius
formerly so powerful. If he have not the gift of
expressing his thoughts, he stands discouraged in
the presence of this great world, which seems to
him so strong, so wise, so learned. All that comes
from this centre of light, he readily accepts, and
prefers to his own conceptions. In presence of
this wisdom, the little popular muse restrains her-
self, and dares not breathe ; the village maid
is awe-struck, and is either silent or sings its
songs. So we have seen Beranger, with his ex-
quisite and nobly classical style, become the na-
tional song-maker, take possession of the entire
people, displace the old village songs, and even the
antique melodies sung by our sailors. Our later
poets amongst the working class have imitated the
rhythms of Lamartine, renouncing themselves as
far as was in them, and too often sacrificing that
popular originality which they might prefer their
claim to.
The fault of the people, when it writes, is to be
ever going out of its own heart, where its strength
lies, to seek and borrow from the higher classes
abstractions, generalities. It possesses the great
advantage, which it in no degree appreciates, of
not knowing the language of convention ; of not
POPULAR ADVANTAGES.
37
being, as we are, haunted, pursued by phrases
ready cut and dry ; by formulas, which come of
themselves when we write, and flow from the very
ink. And this is precisely what the writers of the
people envy us, and borrow fi'om us to the best of
their power. They dress themselves, they put on
gloves to write with, and so lose the superiority
which the strong hand and powerful arm would
give them, if they would but know it.
What matter ? Why ask men of action what
tlieir writings are ? The true products of popular
genius are not books, but brave deeds, speaking
thoughts ; fiery, inspired words, such as I daily
liear in the streets, proceeding from some vulgar
mouth, the least made for inspiration. And now
take this man who so shocks j'ou by his vulgarity ;
make him doff his ragged coat, put a uniform upon
him, give him sabre, musket, drum, colours, and
tlie word to "charge," — you will not know him.
He is another man. Where is the other gone to ?
you cannot find him.
The depression, the degeneration is only exter-
nal. The fundamental is the same. This race has
always wine in its blood. Even in those who seem
the most extinct, you will find a spark. There is
ever the military energy, ever the courageous reck-
lessness, the grand exhibition of independence of
spirit. And not knowing where to gi'ound this in-
dependence (shackled as they are on every side),
they too often ground it on their vices, and boast
of being worse than they are, — the exact contraiy
of the English.
Shackles externally, a strong life boiling within
— the contrast generates many false movements,
and a discordance in acts and words, which, at first
sight, is repulsive. It also induces aristocratic
Europe to delight in confounding the French people
with the imaginative and gesticulating people, such
as the Italians, the Irish, the Welsh, &c. But
what distinguishes it from these in the sti'ongest
and most marked manner is, that in its greatest
excesses, its most ebullient sallies of imagination,
in what the world loves to call its fits of Don Quix-
otism, it preserves its good sense. In its moments
of greatest exaltation, some firm, cool expression,
serves to show that its foot still touches the ground,
that it is not the dupe of its own madness.
This holds good of the French character gene-
rally. To return specifically to the people, we may
observe, that the instinct by which it is governed,
gives it an immense advantage in action. Refiec-
tive thought only arrives at action through all the
intermediate stages of deliberation and discussion ;
it arrives at it through so many things that it often
does not arrive at all. Instinctive thought, on the
contrary, <oi<c/(fs </(C ac(, is almost the act ; it is al-
most at the same time an idea and an action.
The classes which we call inferior, and which
follow instinct most closely, are, from this very cir-
cumstance, eminently capable of action, and ever
ready to act. We, cultivated men, prate, argue,
and expend all our energy in words. We enervate
ourselves by dissipation of mind, by the vain
amusement of roaming from book to book, or of a
war of publications. We give way to great bursts
of wrath on little subjects. We vent strong re-
proaches, loud threats of action. . . . This over,
we do nothing, we do not act. . . . We pass on to
other disputes.
They do not talk so much, they do not make i
themselves hoarse with crying out like the learned,
and old women. But when the occasion comes,
they take advantage of it, without any noise; they
profit by it, thej«.act with vigour. Economy of
woi'ds adds what it saves to energy of acts.
This principle laid down, let us take as judges
between the two classes, the heroic men of anti-
quity, or of the middle age, and let us see then
which of the two, those who speak, or those who
act, constitute aristocracy. They will unhesita-
tingly answer, " Those who act."
And if you prefer making superiority exist in
good sense and good judgment, I know not in what
class you will find a more sensible man than the
old peasant of France. Not to speak of his acute-
ness (finesse) in whatever affects his interest, he
knows men well, he divines that world (societc)
which he has not seen. He has a fund of inward
I'eflection, and singular prescience of national ob-
jects and events. He judges of the heavens, and,
at times, of the earth, better than an augur of an-
tiquity.
Outwardly passing a wholly physical and vege-
tative life, these men think, dream ; and, what is
in the young man a dream, in the old becomes re-
flection and wisdom. We have all the aids which
can stimulate, sustain, and fix meditation. But, on
the other hand, more bound up with life, with plea-
sures, with vain conversations, we can rarely re-
flect, and still more rarely wish to reflect. The
man of the people, on the contrary, is often com-
polled to solitude by the very nature of his employ-
ment— isolated either amidst the fields, or by those
noisy trades which create a solitude even in the
midst of a crowd. So, if he would not perish
of listlessness, his soul must turn to itself, and con-
verse with his soul.
The wives of the people, in particular, obliged
much more than others to be the providence of the
family, and that of their husband, and forced daily to
employ all the resources of address and of virtuous
stratagem, to keep him in the right path, occasion-
ally attain, at last, to an astonishing degree of
maturity. I have met with some who, having pre-
served up to the close of life, through all their
rude trials, the best instincts, who having con-
stantly cultivated themselves by reflection, and
having been elevated by the naturally progressive
improvement of a life of devotion and of purity,
no longer belonged to their own class, nor, I take
it, to any, but were, in reality, supei-ior to all.
They were of extraordinary prudence and pene-
tration, even in matters that you would have sup-
posed them to have no experience in. They saw
so clearly into probabilities, that one would have
been apt to attribute to them a spirit of divination.
In no other persons have I met with such a junc-
tion of two things which are ordinarily supposed
to be very distinct, and even opposed — worldly
wisdom and the Spirit of God.
CHAPTER III.
DOES THE PEOPLE GAIN MUCH BY SACRIFICING ITS
INSTINCT?— BASTARD CLASSES.
This peasant of whom we were speaking, this cir-
cumspect prudent man, has, however, one fixed
idea : it is, that his son shall not be a peasant, that
he shall rise, that he shall become bourgeois. He
38
THE PEOPLE.
succeeds but too well. You will have difficulty in
recognizing tliis son, who is sent to college, who
becomes Monsieur the priest (cure), Monsieur the
lawyer, Monsieur the manufactMrer. Red faced
and burly, come of a strong stock, he will convey
his vulgar activity into all places and things ; he
will be an orator, a politician, a man of importance,
of high views, who has no longer anything in com-
mon with little folk. You will meet with him at
every corner with his overpowering voice, and
concealing in glazed gloves his father's coarse
hands.
This is a wrong expression. The father had
strong hands, the son has coarse ones. The
father, beyond a doubt, was more muscular and
shrewd. He came closer by far to the aristocracy.
He did not talk so much, and he went right to the
mark.
Has the son risen by quitting the condition of his
father ? Has there been a progress from the one
to the other ? Yes, v*ithout a doubt, as regards
cultivation and bearing. No; as regards origin-
ality and real distinction.
All now- a-days quit their condition; they rise, or
think they rise. Within these thirty years, five
hundred thousand vv'orkmen have taken out licences
and become masters. The number of labourers in
the country who have become proprietors * cannot
be calculated. The liberal professions, as they are
called, have been I'ecruited to an immense extent
in the lower ranks — now they are full, filled up.
A pi'ofound change has been the result of all this,
both in ideas and morality. Man makes his soul
out of his material situation. Strange ! there is
the poor man's soul, the rich man's soul, the shop-
keeper's soul. ... It seems as if man were only
the accessary of fortune.
There has been, then, amongst these different
classes, not union and association, but hasty incom-
plete mixture. Undoubtedly, this has been a thing
of necessity, in order to neutralize the obstacles
otherwise insurmountable, encountered by this new
equality. But the result has none the less been
to imprint great vulgarity on art, literature, on
everything. It is marvellous to see how people in
easy circumstances, and even the i-ich, learn to
do with articles of the commonest kind, so long
as they are cheap. You will meet in sumptu-
ous mansions with common, mean, tasteless
ornaments. They desii'e art — but at a discount.
That which constitutes true nobility, the jMwer of
sacrifice, is the defect of the new man. It is his
defect in art as well as in politics. He can sacri-
fice nothing, even for his real interests. This
moral infirmity pursues him even into his enjoy-
ments and his vanities, and renders these mean
and vulgar.
Will this class, made out of all classes, will this
bastard mixture, which has been so quickly made,
and which is already growing decrepid, be pro-
ductive ? I doubt it ; the nuile is sterile.
A people, which, compared with the military
ones (France, Poland, &c.) appears to me emi-
nently the people bourgeois — the English, may en-
lighten us on the futui*e chances of the bourgeoisie.
None other in the world has experienced more
changes of classes, and none has taken more pains
to disguise the new man, the shopkeeper's son,
under the semblance of the lord. And these very
• That is, holders of small bits of land.
men, who for the two last centuries have re-
cruited the entire English nobility, have been most
intent on preserving, together with the names and
arms, the venerable seats, the moveables, the
hereditary galleries and collections, and have even
tried to copy the manners and characters of the an-
cient families whose hearths they had usurped. With
sustained pride they have in attitudes, in speaking, in
all matters of form, represented, enacted those old
barons. Well ! what have they produced with all
this labour, this art of preserving tradition, of manu-
factui-ing the antique ? They have made a grave
serious race of nobles, with considerable stead-
fastness of purpose, but, substantially, with few
resources, little political invention, and in no de-
gree worthy of the great circumstances in which the
British empire is placed and will be placed.
Where, I i)ray you, is the England of Shakspeare
and of Bacon? The bourgeoisie (disguised, ennobled,
it matters not which,) have preponderated since
Cromwell's time. Power, wealth have inci'eased be-
yond all calculation. The means of cultivation have
been I'aised, but, at the same time, an indescribably
poor equality has been established amongst the gen-
tlemen— a universal similarity of men and things.
In their fashionable writing you can hardly distin-
guish letter from letter ; nor, in their towns,
house from house ; nor in their people, English-
man from Englishman.
To return. I incline to think that, in futui'e,
great inventive originality will belong to those men
who shall not lose themselves in those mongrel
amalgamations, in which all native character is
enervated. Strong men will appear, who will
not seek to rise ; who, born people, will remain
people. To raise themselves to ease, well and
good ; but to enter the bourgeoisie, to change their
condition and their habits, will seem to them un-
desirable. They will feel that they would be scant
gainers thereby. The strong sap, the large instinct
of the masses, courage of mind, — the working man
possesses this all the better when he is not worn
down by work, when his life is ameliorated, and he
remains master of some leisure moments.
I have had two instances of this come to my
knowledge, of men who, with great good sense,
have declined rising above their station. One, a
workman in a manufactory, intelligent and self-
collected, constantly refused the situation of over-
seer, fearing its responsibility, the reproof to which
it is exposed, the hard contact of the manufacturer,
and preferring to work in silence, alone with his
thoughts. His admirable internal peace, which
recalled that of the mystic workmen of whom I
have spoken, would have been lost had he accepted
this new position.
The other, a shoemaker's son, having completed
his classical studies, prepared himself for the bar,
and been even called to it, bowed without a mur-
mur to the necessity of his family, which demanded
the sacrifice, and returned to his father's trade, —
showing that a strong mind can indiiferently either
rise or descend. His resignation has had its re-
ward. This man, who did not seek gl<iry, has now
attained it in his son, who, singularly gifted, con-
ceived even in his trade the sentiment of art, and
subsequently became one of the greatest painters
of the day.
Constant change of conditions, trades, habits,
hinder all internal advancement. They produce
THE CHILD, INTERPRETER OF THE PEOPLE.
38
those mixtures which are at oue and tlie same
time vulgar, assuming, unfruitful. If you were to
change the relative value of strings in an instru-
ment, under pretence of improving them, and re-
duce them all to a common standard, you would in
reality have done away with them, have I'eudered
the instrument useless, harmony impossible.
To remain oneself is great strength, a chance of
originality. If fortune change, so much the better;
but let nature remain. The man of the people
should look to it well before stifling his instinct in
order to follow in the wake of boim/eois spirits.
If he remain faithful to his trade and change it,
like Jacquart ; if out of a trade he form an art, like
Bernard Palissy, what greater glnry could he have
in this world 1
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE SIMPLE. — THE CHILD, INTERPRETER OF THE
PEOPLE.
Whosoever desires to know the highest gifts of
the instinct of the people, must disregard the
mongrel, bastard, semi-cultivated spirits who par-
ticipate in the qualities and defects of the bour-
geoisie, lie must search out and study, above all,
the simple.
The simple are, in general, those who are little
accustomed to divide thought, who, not being armed
with the machinery of analysis and abstraction, see
each thing one, entire, concrete, just as it is pre-
sented in life.
The simple form a large people. There are the
simple by nature, the simple by culture, the poor
in intellect, who will never learn to distinguish,
children who do not yet distinguish, and the pea-
sants and the populace, who are not habituated
to distinguish.
The schoolman, the critic, the man of analysis,
of nisi ("I take an exception"), of distlnguo ("I
draw a distinction "), looks down on the simple.
They, however, have this advantage from not di-
viding, of genei'ally seeing things in their natural
state, organized and living. Giving little into
reflection, they ra'e often rich by instinct. Inspira-
tion is not ra*'e in these classes of men ; sometimes
it is even a sort of divination. We find among
them individuals who stand altogether apart, and
who preserve, in a prosaic life, that which is the
highest moral poetry — simplicity of heart. Nothing
is rarer than to preserve these divine gifts of child-
hood, and so to do generally presupposes a peculiar
grace and a sort of sanctity.
To treat of it only, requires the self-same gift
and grace. Knowledge, it is true, by no means
excludes simplicity, but does not give it. And the
will has here little power.
The great legist of Toulouse * stops in the most
difficult part of his work, and prays his auditory to
ask for him a special light in so subtle a matter.
How much more do we stand in need of it ! — I,
and you, my friends, who read me. How essential is
it for us to possess, not the gift of subtlety, but,
on the contrary, of simplicity and childishness
of heart !
The wise must no more be content to'say, " Suffer
* Montesquieu.'
these little ones to come." They must go to them.
They have much to learn in the midst of these chil-
dren. The best course for them to take, is to ad-
journ their study, to close their books which have
profited them so little, and to go quietly amongst
mothers and nurses, to unlearn and forget.
Forget ? No ; but rather to reform their wis-
dom, to adjust it by the instinct of those who are
nearer to God, to rectify it by placing it by the side
of this small standard, and tell themselves that the
knowledge of the three worlds does not contain
more than there is in this cradle.
To speak only of the subject we are now con-
sidering. No one will be able to investigate it to
the bottom, except he has well observed the child.
The child is the interpreter of the people. What
do 1 say ? It is the people themselves in their native
truth before they are deformed ; the people — without
vulgarity, without rudeness, without envy, inspir-
ing neither distrust nor repugnance. Not only
does the child interpret them, but, in regard to
many things, it justifies and proves their innocence.
The word you think rude and gross in the mouth
of a rude man, in that of your child you consider
(what it really is) naive; and you thus learn to be on
your guard against unjust prejudices. The child,
like the people, being in a state of happy ignorance
of conventional language, of the set formulas and
phrases which dispense with invention, shows you,
himself the example, liow the people are obliged to
go about seeking their language and to be constantly
finding it ; and both people and child often find
with a happy energy.
It is by the child, again, that you can appreciate
how much the people, all changed as it is, preserves
of the young and primitive. Your son — as does
the peasant of Brittany and the Pyrenees — speaks
at each instant the language of the Bible or of the
Iliad. Tlie boldest criticism of the Vices, the
Wolfs, the Niebuhrs, is nothing in comparison with
the luminous and profound lights which a few
words of your child will suddenly open to you in
the night of antiquity. How often, observing the
historical and narrative form which lie gives even to
abstract ideas, you will perceive how infant peoples
must have narrated their dogmas in legends, and
made a history of each moral truth ! ... It is here,
I say, that we must be mute. . . . Let us close
round and hearken to this young master of anti-
quity. To instruct us, he does not require to
analyze what he says, for he stands before us a
living witness : " He was there, he knows the story
better."
In him, as in young peoples, all is still concen-
trated, is m the concrete and living state. We have
only to consider him to be conscious of the singu-
larly abstract state at which we are now arrived.
Many hollow abstractions will not stand this ex-
amination. Our children of France, especially, who
are so lively and such talkers, with very precocious
good sense are ever bringing us back to realities.
These innocent critics are exceedingly embarrassing
to the sage. Their naive questions, too, often show
him theGordian knot of things. They have not learnt,
as we have, to (urn aside difficulties, to avoid certain
problemswhich sages seem to have come to an agree-
ment never to discuss. Their bold little logic goes
always right on. No consecrated absurdity would
have stood its ground in this world, if the man had
not silenced the objection of the child. From four
40
THE PEOPLE.
to twelve, especially, is the reasoning epoch. Be-
tween lactation and the appearance of the sex,
children seem lighter, less material, livelier of mind
than they afterwards are. An eminent gram-
marian, who has always preferred the company of
children to any other, told me that at this age he
found them capable of the subtlest abstractions.
They deteriorate infinitely by growing up so
quickly, by passing rapidly from instinctive to
reflective life. Up to this time they lived on the
large fund of instinct, they swum in a sea of milk.
When, from this obscure and fecund sea, logic
begins to draw up a few luminous threads, there is
progress, no doubt a necessary progress, which is
a condition of life ; but, in one sense, this progress
is not the less a fall. The child becomes man —
and was a little god.
Early infancy and death are the moments that
the infinite radiates in man, are grace — understand
the word either as artist or theologian : plastic
grace of the infant who plays and accustoms itself
to life, austere and solemn grace of the dying
where life finishes, ever divine grace. Nothing
more impresses us with the grand Biblical word,
" You are gods, you shall be gods."
Apelles and Correggio were incessantly studying
these divine movements. Correggio passed all days
in seeing little children play. Apelles, says an
ancient, loved to paint the dying only.
On these days of arrival, of departure, of passage
between two worlds, man seems to contain them
both together. Tiie instinctive life in which he is
then sunk, is, as it were, the dawn and the twilight
of thought, more vague than thought, no doubt, but
how much vaster ! The whole intermediate tra-
vail of reasoning and reflective life is like a narrow
line springing from the immense obscure, and re-
turning to it. Would you seize it, study by the
side of the infant, of the dying. Place yourself by
their pillow; observe, be silent.
I have unfortunately had too many occasions to
contemplate the approaches of death, and in those
most dear to me. Especially do I call to mind a
long winter's day that I passed between the bed of
a dying mother, and the reading of Isaiah. The
spectacle, a most painful one, was that of a struggle
betwixt wakefulness and sleep, a laborious dream
of a soul which rose up, sunk. . . . The eyes, which
swam in the void, expressed with distressing trou-
ble, uncertainty between two worlds. The thought,
obscure and vast, revolved all the past life, and
grew large and expanded with immense presenti-
ments. . . . The witness of this grand struggle,
who participated in its flux, reflux, all its anxieties,
clung, as in a shipwreck, to the firm belief that a
soul, which whilst returning to our primitive in-
stincts, already anticipated those of the unknown
world, could not be proceeding this way to anni-
hilation.
The whole scene led to the inference that it
rather went to endow with this double instinct
some young existence, which would resume more
happily the work of life, and would lend to the
dreams of that soul, to its begun thoughts, its mute
wishes, the words they had wanted.
One thing always strikes one when observing
children and the dying — tlie perfect nobility with j
which nature endows them. Man is born noble, he
dies noble. It takes the whole work of life to be-
come gross, ignoble, to create inequality.
Look at this child, whom his kneeling mother
has so well named her Jesus. . . . Society, educa-
tion, quickly change him. The infinite which was
in him, and which rendei'ed him divine, gradually
disappears. He acquires character, it is true, in-
dividualizes himself, but contracts. . . . Logic,
criticism, hews, pitilessly sculptures what seems to
it a block — hard statuary, whose chisel bites into
the too tender matter, each blow strikes off whole
flakes. . . . Ah ! how meagre and mutilated is he
now ! Where is now the noble amplitude of his
nature ? . . . The worst is, that under the influence
of so rude an education, he will not be only weak
and sterile, but will become vulgar.
When we regret our childhood, we do not so
much regret the life, the years that wei-e there
before us, as our nobleness. We had then, indeed,
that simple dignity of the being who has not yet
bowed down, equality with all ; all were then
young, all beautiful, all free. . . . Let us be patient,
it will I'eturn. Inequality is only for life ; equality,
liberty, nobleness, we recover all by death.
Alas ! this moment returns only too quickly for
the larger number of children. We persist in
seeing in childhood only our apprenticeship to life,
a preparation for living, and the majority do not
live. We seek to secure their happiness " in fu-
tui'e years," and for the sake of these uncertain
years, we render the little moment which is theirs,
tedious, tiresome, and wretched *.
No, childhood is not a period, only a stage of
life; 'tis a people, the people in a state of innocence.
. . . This flower of humanity, which has, generally,
so short a time to live, follows nature, into whose
bosom she must soon sink back. . . .And it is pre-
cisely natui'e which we seek to subdue m it. Man
who, as regards himself, endeavours to escape from
the barbarism of the middle age, still keeps it up
as regards the child — still setting out on the inhu-
man principle, that our nature is bad, that to re-
form, not to educate it, is thrift, that human art
and wisdom ought to amend and chastise that in-
stinct which is God's gilt.
CHAPTER V.
CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT. — IS THE NATURAL
INSTINCT OP THE CHILD DEPRAVED t.
Is human instinct depraved in advance ? Is man
wicked from his birth ? Is the infant thiit I re-
ceive in my arms, as it leaves its mother's bosom,
a little demon ?
To this monstrous question, which it is painful
only to write, the middle-age, without pity, without
hesitation, answers — Yes.
What ! this creature that seems so helpless, so
innocent, tow'ards which all nature feels tender,
which the she-wolf or lioness would suckle, in de-
fault of its mother, has this creature the instinct of
• I do not allude to the preposterous tasks or the num-
berless and excessive punishments which we inflict on their
restless activity, an activity willed by nature itself, but to
the hard stupidity which leads us to plunge, suddenly, and
without any previous preparation, into cold abstractions a
young being that has barely quitted the maternal blood and
milk, still warm from both, and which only asks to blow and
blossom like the flowers.
t This chapter, which the heedless reader may think
foreign from the subject, is its very essence.
MISERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGE.
41
evil only, the breath of that which lost Adam ?
Would it be the devil's, if we did not make haste
to exorcise it ? Even after this, if it die in its
nurse's arms, it has to take its trial, it is in peril of
damnation, it may be cast to the black beasts of
hell ! " Deliver not up to the beasts,'" says the
Cimrch, " the souls which bear witness unto thee !"
And liow is this being to bear witness ? It has, as
yet, neither understanding nor speech.
Visiting in the month of August 1843, some
burial-grounds in the environs of Lucerne, I
lighted upon a very simple and affecting exempli-
fication of religious ten'ors. In conformity with
ancient custom there was a vessel of holy water at
the foot of each tomb, in order to guard the dead
night and day, and to prevent the Least of hell from
seizing the body, harassing it, taking it to and fro,
from making a vampire of it. For the soul, alas!
there are no means of defending it. This cruel fear
was avowed in many of the epitaphs. Before
the following I stood long unable to tear myself
away : — / am a child, two years oj age. . . . How
dreadful is it for such a little child to be summoned to
the judgment seat, and to appear so early before the
face of God ! " I melted into tears ; I then be-
came conscious of the abyss of a mother's despair.
The needy quarters of our great towns, those vast
laboratories of death, where women, wretchedly
fecund, bring forth only to weep, may give us some
notion, though a very imperfect one, of the per-
petual mourning of the mother of the middle age ;
and [who, ever adding to her family, through the
want of foresight characteristic of barbarism, was
ever bringing forth, without truce or cessation, into
this world of tears and of desolation, infants — dead,
damned.
Frightful age ! World of cruel illusions, over
which hell seemed to hover with infernal irony.
Man, the plaything of his own changing, divine,
diabolic dreams ! Woman, man's plaything, ever
a mother, ever mourning ! Childhood, playing,
alas! for a day, at the sad game of life, smiling,
weeping, and disappearing .... unhappy little
sliadows that come by millions and thousands of
millions, and endure only in the mother's recollec-
tions. . . . The despair of the latter is marked by
one thing above all — she easily abandons herself to
sin and damnation, gladly avenges herself on man's
brutality, deceives him, weeps, laughs*. . . . She
is lost ; what matter, so that she rejoins her child ?
The child that survives is not the happier for it.
The middle-age is a cruel schoolmaster to him ;
schoolmg him into the most complicated creed, the
most beyond the reach of the simple, that has ever
been taught. That subtle lesson, wliich the Roman
empire in its palmiest day of wisdom had such dif-
ficulty in compi'ehending, the child of the barbarian,
the son of the rural serf, lost in the shades of the
woods, is called upon to learn and to understand.
He learns it, he repeats it. To uudei'stand this
* Woman's infidelity is the peculiar theme of the middle
age. This unvarying subject for jokes, those joyous stories,
can only sadden him who knows and who comprehends.
They prove too clearly the overpowering listlessness of those
times, the void of souls without food suited to their weak-
ness, the moral prostration, the despair of good, the aban-
donment of oneself and one's salvation.
thorny, Byzantine, and scholastic formula is what
ferule, cuffs, and whippings will never get him
to do.
The church, democratic by its principle of elec-
tion, was eminently aristocratic in the difficulties of
her teaching, and the very small number of men
who could really conquer them. She condemned
natural instinct as perverted and spoiled before-
hand, and erected science, metaphysics, and a most
abstract formula, into the condition of salvation.
All the mysteries of the religion of Asia, all the
subtleties of the western schools, in a word, all the
difficulties the world of East and West contains,
pressed and heaped up into one same formula !
'' Yes," said the Church tons, " it is the whole world
in one prodigious cup. Drink it off in the name of
love !" And, to the support of doctrine, she brings
history, the touching legend — 'tis touching the rim
of the cup with honey. ..." Whatever it con-
tain, I will drain it, if love be really at the bottom,"
so answered mankind. Here was the true diffi-
culty, the objection ; and it is love which made it,
not hate, not the pride of man as is constantly re-
peated.
The middle-age had promised love, and had not
given it. It had said, " Love, love !" But it had
consecrated a civil order full of hate — inequality
in the law, in the state, in families. Its too subtle
instruction, within the reach of so few men, had in-
troduced a new inequality into the world, had set
salvation as a prize which could seldom be gained,
as the prize of an abstruse science ; and it thus
threw the weight of the whole metaphysics of the
world on the simple and the infantile. To the
child, who had been so happy in the ancient world,
the middle-age was a hell. It required centuries
for reason to force itself to light, ftir the child to
reappear, what he is, an innocent. The world felt
it hard to believe that man was a being hereditarily
wicked. It became difficult to maintain in its
barbarity the principle which damned sages, who
had not been born christians, the simple and igno-
rant children dead without baptism. Then was
invented for children, the palliative of limbos — a
little milder hell, where they were ever wander-
ing, in tears, far from their mothers. Insufficient
remedies, which the heart rejected. With the Re-
naissance burst forth, in opposition to the hardness of
the old doctrines, the reaction of love ; which came,
in the name of justice, to save the innocent, coji-
demned by this system which had called itself that
of love and grace. But this system, which rested
altogether on the two ideas of the damnation of all
by the fault of one, and of the salvation of all by the
sacrificeof one, could not renounce the first without
shaking the second.
Mothers were reconciled to believe in the salva-
tion of their children. Henceforward, they always
say, without inquiring whether they are exactly
orthodox, " They are angels above, as they were
whilst here below,"
The heart has conquered, mercy has conquered.
Humanity is constantly receding further from the
ancient injustice. It steers in the contrary direc-
tion to the old world. . . . Whither ? Towards a
world ('tis plain to be foreseen) which shall no more
condemn innocence, and where wisdom may truly
say, " Suffer these little ones to come unto me."
42
THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER VI.
DIGRESSION. — INSTINCT OF ANIMALS. — CLAIM IN THEIR
FAVOUR.
Whatever my eagerness in this review of the simple,
of the humble sons of instinct,ray heartstops me,and
compels me to say a word of the superlatively simple,
of the most innocent, of the most unhappy, perhaps —
I mean, of animals. I just now observed that every
child was born noble. In like manner, naturalists
have remarked that the young animal, more
intelligent at his birth, seemed at that moment
to approximate to the child. In proportion to
its growth, it becomes brute, and sinks into the
beast. It seems as if its poor soul succumbed un-
der the weight of the body, and underwent the
fascination of nature, the spell of the great Cii'ce.
On this, man turns away, and can no longer recog-
nize a soul. The child alone, in the instinct of his
heart, still feels the person within this disdained
being, speaks to it and questions it. And it, too,
on its side, listens and loves the child.
The animal ! Sombre mystery ! . . . Immense
world of mute dreams and pains. . . . Though, in
default of language, these pains are expressed by
too visible signs. All nature protests against the
barbarity of the man who disowns, degrades, who
tortures his inferior brother, and accuses him
before Him who created them both !
Away with prejudice, and look at their mild and
dreamy air, and the attraction which the most ad-
vanced amongst them evidently feel toman. Would
you not say they were children whose development
was hindered by a malicious fairy, who have not
been able to unravel the first dream of their
cradle, perhaps souls in a state of punishment
and humiliation, lying under the curse of a pass-
ing fatality ? . . . Sad enchantment, in which the
captive being, of imperfect form, depends on all
those that surround it, as a person cast into a
sleep. . . . But because it is as if cast into a sleep,
it has, in recompense, access to a sphere of dreams
of which we have not an idea. We see the lumi-
nous face of the world, it the obscure ; who can
say, that this is not the vaster of the two ? The
East has remained in this belief ; the animal is a
soul cast into a sleep, or enchanted. The middle
age returned to it. Religions and systems have
alike been unable to stiHe this voice of nature.
India, nearer to the creation than we, has preserved
the tradition of universal fraternity more faithfully,
and has inscribed it in the beginning and at the end
of her two grand sacred poems, the Raniayan, the
Mahabbarat ; gigantic pyramids, in presence of
which our petty works of the West ought to stand
humbly and respectfully. When you shall be
tired of this disputatious West, give yourself the
enjoyment, I pray you, of returning to your mothei*,
— noble, tender, majestic antiquity. Love, humility,
grandeur, you will find all united there, and that in
so simple a sentiment, so divested of all the wretched-
ness of pride, that one need never speak there of
humility.
India was recompensed for her gentleness to-
wards nature ; in her, genius was a gift of pity.
The first Indian poet sees doves flying about, and
whilst he admires their grace and their amorous
play, one of them falls at his feet, struck by an
arrow. ... lie weeps. His groans measui-cd,
without his thinking of it, in unison with the beat-
ings of his heart, take a rhythmical movement, and
poetry is born. . . . From this moment, two by
two, the melodious doves, revived in the song of
man, love and fly over all the earth. (Ramayan.)
Grateful nature has endowed India with another
admirable gift, fecundity. Surrounded by her
with tenderness and respect, nature has multiplied
for her as well as for the animal, the source of life
by which the earth is renewed. There, there is
never exhaustion. Countless wars, disasters, and
servitudes, have been unable to dry up the dug of
the sacred cow. A river of milk always flows
from this blessed land; . . blessed by its own good-
ness, by its gentle tenderness towards inferior
creation. Pride has bi'oken this touching union,
which at the beginning linked man to the humblest
children of God — but not with impunity; the earth
has turned rebel, has refused to nourish inhuman
races. That world of pride, the Greek and Roman
city, had a contempt for nature; it only set store
on art, only esteemed itself. This haughty ancient
world, which would have the noble alone, suc-
ceeded but too well in suppressing all the rest.
All that seemed low and ignoble disappeared from
the eyes ; the animals perished as well as the
slaves. The Roman empire, disembarrassed of
both, entered into the majesty of the desert. The
earth, ever expending, and never recruiting, be-
came, with the numerous monuments that covered
it, as if a garden of marble. There were towns,
still, but no more country; circusses, triumphal
arches ; but no more huts, no more labourers.
Magnificent roads were ever ready for the travel-
ler, but none travelled. Sumptuous aqueducts con-
tinued to bear rivers to silent cities, and met with
none to slake their thirst.
Before this desolation was brought about, one
man alone found in his heart a claim in favour of,
a complaint in sorrow of all that was being swept
from the face of the earth. One man alone, amidst
the wide-spreading destruction of the civil wars, in
which men and beasts both perished, found in his
comprehensive pity tears for the labouring ox
which had fertilized ancient Italy ; and to these
vanishing races he consecrated a divine poem.
Tender and profound Virgil ! . . I who was nursed
by him, and brought up on his knees as it were, am
linppy that this unique glory is his, the glory of
pity and of excellence of heart. . . . This peasant
of Mantua, with his virgin-like timidity, and long
hair falling down in country fashion, is, uncon-
sciously to himself, the true poutifi' and augur
between two worlds, between two ages, on the half-
way of liistoi-y. Indian by his tenderness for na-
ture, Christian by his love of man, this sim])le
man reconstructs in his immense heart that lovely
universal city, from which nothing that has life is
excluded, whilst each wishes to introduce his own
dear ones only.
Christianity, despite its gentle'spirit, did not re-
knit the ancient union, but preserved a Judaic
prejudice against nature. Judea, who knew her-
self, had dreaded loving this sister of man's to ex-
cess, and ^.had fled it with curses. Christianity,
faithful to these fears, kept animal natm-e at an in-
finite distance from man, and vilified it. The
symbolic animals which accompany the Evange-
lists,the cold allegorism of the lamb and of the dove,
did not raise u]) the brute. The new benediction fell
not on it ; salvation did not come for the smallest.
RESTORATION OF NATURE.
43
the humblest of creation. TlieGud man tliedfurniau,
and not for them. Having no ])art in salvation,
they remain out of the ]iale of the Christian law,
as pagans, as \inclean, and too often as suspected of
connivance with the evil principle. Did not Christ,
in the Gospel, suffer the devils to enter the swine ?
Never can we know the terrors in which the middle
ages lived, for a succession of ages, always in pre-
sence of the devil ; the vision of the invisible evil
one, bad dream, absurd torture, and thence, a fan-
tastic life, which would make one every moment
laugh, wei'e not one sensible that its sadness merits
tears rather ! . , . Who, of those times, could have
a doubt of the devil ? "I have seen him," says
the emperor Charles. " I have seen him," says Gre-
goi'y VII. The bishops who make popes, the monks
who pray their life long, declare that he is there
behind them, that they fuel him, that he won't
budge. . . . The poor village serf, who sees him
figured as a beast over the church-door, dreads, as
he returns home, to find him amongst his own
beasts, who assume as the night falls, by the flick-
ering light of the liearth, a most fantastic aspect —
the bull wears a strange mask, the goat an equivo-
cal mien, and what must he think of that cat
whose skin, when touched at night, emits sparks
of fire ?
It is the child that reassures the man. So little
does he fear these animals, that he makes them his
companions. He feeds the ox with leaves, gets on
the goat's back, boldly pulls about the black cat.
He does better, he imitates them, counterfeits their
voice . . . and the family smiles : " Why fear so;
I was in the wrong. This is a Christian house,
holy waters and holy bush — he durst not come. . . .
My beasts are God's beasts, innocents, children.
. . . Even the animals in the fields seem to know
God, they live like liermits. That fine stag, now,
which bears the cross on its head, which stalks like
a living wood through the wood, seems itself a
miracle. The doe is as gentle as any cow, and she
has no horns ; had the mother not been able, the
doe would have nursed my child. . . ." And this
last sentiment, expressed, as all then is, under an
historical form, is developed, and ends in producing
the finest of the legends of the middle-age, that of
Genevieve of Brabant — the family, oppressed by
man, welcomed by the animal, the innocent wife
saved by the innocent brute of the wood ; and safety
thus proceeding from the least and humblest.
The animals, rehabilitated, take their place in the
villager's family next to the child who loves them;
just as the humbler relatives seat themselves at
the lower end of the table in a noble family. They
are treated as such on great occasions, bear their
share in the joys and sorrows, are tricked out in
mourning or in wedding gear (the custom was kept
up recently in Brittany). They say nothing, it is
true, but they are docile and listen patiently; and
man, as priest in his own house, preaches to them
in the Lord's name *.
Thus the popular genius, simpler and more pro-
found than the consecrated sophistry of priest and
schoolman, brought about timidly, but eftectually,
the rehabilitation of nature. The latter was not
ungrateful. Man was rewarded. These poor
beings, who have nothing, gave treasures. The ani-
mal, as soon as he was loved, lasted and multiplied.
* See the litlle sermon to the fugitive bees, in my Origincs
du Droit,
. . . And the earth became fertile once more ; aud
the world, which seemed drawing to a close, com-
menced a new, rich, and i)owerful career ; for the
blessing of mercy had fallen on it like the dew.
The next step is, to introduce the family, composed
on this wise; to introduce all its members into the
Church. And, here, a great difficulty. There is
no objection to receiving the animal, but only to
sprinkle it with holy water, to exorcise it as it
were, admitting it no further than the church-yard
(partis). . . . Simple man, leave thy beast there,
enter alone. Entry into the church is the jud/j-
ment which thou seest represented on the door ;
the law sits on the threshold, St. Michael standing
above holds the sword and the balance. . . . How
judge, save, or damn what thou bringest with thee ?
Has the brute a soul ? . . . What do with these
souls of brutes ? Shall we open limbos for them,
as for those of little children ? No matter, our
man persists. He listens respectfully, but cares
not to comprehend. He has no wish to be saved
alone, and without those belonging to him. Why
should not his ox and his ass be saved along with
St. Paulinus's dog 1 They have worked as well !
" Ha, ha, I will be cunning," he says to himself,
" I will choose Christmas day when the Church
has a family meeting, the day when God is still too
little to be just. . . . Just or not, we will all go in, I,
my wife, my child, my ass. . . . Yes, my ass. He
has been at Bethlehem, he carried our Lord. The
poor brute may well call one day liis in return. . . .
Besides, I am not too sure that it is what it seems.
After all, it is tricksy and idle. It is just like my-
self ; if I were not so hard i>ut to it, I would not
work much."
Great was the spectacle, and still more touching
than risible, when the animal in most common use
among the people was, despite the prohibitions of
bishops and councils, led by it into the church.
Nature, condemned and accursed, returned victo-
rious under the humblest form which could win
pardon. She returned with the saints of paganism,
between the Sibyl and Virgil. . . . They met the
animal with the sword which stopped it when
Balaam was on its back ; but this sword of the
ancient law, blunted as it was, frightened it no
longer. On this day, the law ended and gave place
to grace. Humbly, but confidently, the patient
animal went straight to the manger. There it
listened to the service, and knelt as devoutly as
any baptized Christian. There was then sung to it,
partly in the language of the Church, partly in old
French (Gaulois), in order that it might understand
what was passing, its anthem, at once burlesque
and sublime : —
" On ihy knees, and say, Amen !
Eat thy fill of grass and hay;
Amen ! once and once again.
Leave the old things, and a\^■ay !"
This reparation did the animal little good. The
councils closed the church against him. The phi-
losophers, who, as far as pride and hardness of heart
were concerned, were continuators of the theologians,
ruled that it had no soul. It suffers in this world ;
still must expect no comjicnsation in a better one.
... So there is to be no God for it. Man's tender
father must be a cruel tyrant to what is not man !
. . . To have created puppets, but endowed with
sensibility, machines, but alive to sutforing, auto-
mata which resemble superior creatures only in
44
THE PEOPLE.
the faculty of enduring evil ! . . . Heavy be the
earth upon you, ye hard men, who have enter-
tained tliis impious idea ; who pass such a sentence
on so many innocent and painful existences !
A great glory has been reserved for our age. A
philosopher has been found with a man's heart.
He loved the infant, the animal. The infant, be-
fore its birth, had only excited interest as an out-
line, a preparation for life. He loved it for itself,
traced it patiently through its little, obscui'e exis-
tence, and detected in its changes the faithful
reproduction of the animal metamorphoses. And
so, in the bosom of woman, in the true sanctuary
of nature, there has been discovered the mystery
of universal fraternity. . . . All thanks be to God!
This is the true rehabilitation of the inferior
order of life. The animal, that serf of serfs, is dis-
covered to be the kinsman of the lord of creation.
May the latter, then, resume, with a gentler
sentiment, the great work of the education of
animals, which formerly won him the globe, and
which he has neglected for two thousand years, to
the great injury of the earth. May the people
leai-n that its prusperity depends on the regard it
shall have for this poor inferior people. May
science remember tliat the animal, being in closer
relation to nature, was, in ancient times, its augur
and interpreter. It will find a voice from God in
the instinct of these simplest of the simple.
CHAPTER VII.
THE INSTINCT OF THE SIMPLE. — THE INSTINCT OF GENIUS.
— THE MAN OF GENIUS IS, PRE-EMINENTLY, THE SIMPLE,
THE CHILD, AND THE PEOPLE.
I HAVE read in the life of a great doctor of the
Church, that, having revisited his monastery after
death, he manifested himself not to the first of his
brothers, but to the last, the simplest, a half-witted
being, who was honoured by dying three days after,
and expired, his face lighted up with a truly celes-
tial joy. " You might," says the legendary, " have
addressed him with the line of Virgil, —
" Little child, know thy mother by lier smile !"
It is a remarkable fact, that most men of genius
have a peculiar liking for children and the simple.
The latter, on their side, usually timid in ordinary
society, mute before men of wit, experience a com-
plete sense of security in the presence of genius.
The power which awes all else, gives them, on the
contrary, confidence. They feel that they will not
be received with mockery, but benevolence and
protection. And then they find themselves really
in their natural state ; their tongue is untied, and
it is discovered that these people, who are called
simple because they are ignorant of the conven-
tional tone of the world, are frequently only the
more original for this; in particular highly imagi-
native, and endowed with a singular instinct for
seizing upon remote affinities. They are fond of
comparing and connecting, but seldom distinguish
or analyze. Not only does distinguishing, dividing,
overtax their powers, but it pains them, — they con-
sider it a dismemberment. They shrink from dis-
secting life, and everything seems to them to have
life. Things, whatever they may be, are to them
like so many organic beings, which they would
scruple to alter in the slightest degi'ee. They draw
back the moment it becomes necessary to derange
by analysis whatever presents the least appearance
of vital harmony. A disposition of the kind gene-
rally presupposes natural gentleness and goodness :
we call them, g(jod people. And not only do they
not divide, but as soon as they find a thing divided,
partial, they either pass it by, or mentally rejoin to
it all from which it is separated ; and they re-
compose this whole with a rapidity of imagination
that could not be expected from their natural slow-
ness. They only are powerful to reconstruct, in pro-
portion as they are impotent to divide. Or rather,
it seems, on looking at so easy an operation, that it
betokens neither power nor its want, but is a
necessary fact, inherent in their existence. In
fact, it is by virtue of this that they exist as simple.
A hand appears in the light. The reasoner con-
cludes that undoubtedly there is in the shadow a
man, whose hand is all he sees ; from the hand he
infers the man. The simple does not reason, does
not draw any inference; but at once, on seeing the
hand he exclaims, " I see a man." And, in fact, he
has seen him with the eyes of the spirit. — Here both
agree ; the reasoning and the simple. Yet, on
innumerable occasions, the simple, who from a part
sees a whole which is not seen, who, from a sign,
divines and affirms a being still invisible, is laughed
at and passes for a fool. Now to see what is invis-
ible to all other eyes, is second sight ; to see what
is likely to come, or about to be, is prophecy: two
things which form the wonder of the multitude, the
derision of sages, and which are, in general, a natu-
ral gift of simplicity. And this gift, which is rare
in civilized countries, is, it is known, very common
amongst simple nations, whether savage or barbar-
ous. The simple sympathize with life, and ai-e
endowed, as their reward, with the magnificent
gift — that the slightest sign is sufticient for them to
see and foresee it. And here is their secret affinity
with the man of genius. They often attain, with-
out effort, and of their simplicity, what he obtains
by his own power of simplifying; so that they who
are the first of men, and they who seem to be the
last, meet on common gi'ound, and undei'stand one
another. Their means of mutual understanding
is their common sympathy for nature and for life,
which makes them take no pleasure except in living
unity.
If you study seriously, in his life and in his works,
that mystery of nature called a man of genius, you
will generally find it to be one who, whilst he has
acquired the gifts of the critic, has at the same
time, acquired the gifts of the simple*. These two
men, opposed everywhere else, are conciliated in
him. At the moment that his inward criticism
seems to have impelled him to infinite division, the
simple keeps unity present to him, preserves in him
the sentiment of life and i-etains it indivisible. But
although genius combines the two powers — the
love of living harmony, and the tender respect for
life are so strong in him, that he would sacrifice
study and science itself, if it could only be mas-
tered by a process of dismemberment. Of the two
men that are in him, he would reject him who
divides, and would keep the simple with his igno-
rant power of divination and projihec}'. This is a
mystery of the heart. If genius through all the
divisions and fictitious anatomy of science, con-
stantly preserve in itself one simple being who will
• La Fontaine and Corneille, Newton and Lagrange,
Ampere and Geolfroy Saint-Hilaire, were at the same time
the simplest and the subtlest of men.
THE MAN OF GENIUS.
45
never consent to true division, who ever tends to
unity, who fears to destroy unity even in the minu-
test thing that exists, it is because the essence of
genius is very love of life, that love whicli impels us
to preserve it, that love which ])roduees it. The
crowd, who see all this confusedly and from with-
out, unable to explain it to themselves, find at
times that this great man is a (/ood man and a
simple man, and marvel at the contrast. But
there is no contrast. Simplicity and goodness are
the constituents of genius, its primary cause ; by
them it participates in the creativeness of God.
This goodness which inspires it with a respect
for those smaller existences which others disregard,
which checks it, sometimes all at once, for fear of
destroying a blade of grass, is the amusement of
the nmltitude. That spirit of simplicity which
prevents divisions from ever shackling his mind;
which, from a part, a sign, enables him to see, fore-
see a whole bemg, a system which none around
him can as yet divine — this marvellous faculty is
precisely that which constitutes the astonishment,
the scandal almost, of the vulgar. It sets him out
of the world as it were, places him beyond opinion,
place, time . . . him, who alone will leave ti'aces
there. And these very traces which he will leave
are not the only work of genius, but all ages will
turn to his life of simplicity, infancy, goodness,
and sanctity, as to a source of moral renewal. This
or that discovery of his may become less useful in
the progress of human events; but his life, which,
in his lifetime, appeared his weak side and that on
which envy fastened by way of set off, will remain
the world's treasure and the eternal festival of the
heart.
Of a verity, the people are in the right to call
this man simple. He is pre-eminently the simple,
the infant of infants ; he is people, more than the
people itself.
I must explain. The simple has his unintelligent
side — confused and undecisive views, amidst which
he wavers, is at fault, follows many paths at once,
and steps out of his character of simple. The
simplicity of genius, which is the true simplicity, is
never embarrassed with these dubious views, but
fixes on objects like a powerful light which has no
need of management, because it at once penetrates
and traverses all. Genius has the gift of childhood,
but beyond the child's measure. This gift, as we
have said, is vague, immense instinct,which I'eflection
soon renders precise and distinct, so that the child
is early a questioner, a caviller, and full of objec-
ti(jns from an early period. Genius preserves the
native instinct in its grandeur, in its strong impul-
siveness, with a grace of God which unhap])ily the
child loses — young and vivacious hope. The peo-
ple, in the higliest sense of the word, is seldom to
be found in the people. Whether I observe it here
or there, it is not it; it is such or such a class, such
or such a partial form of the people, altered and
ephemeral. In fact, it only exists in its truth, and
at its highest power, in the man of genius ; in him
resides the great soul. . . . The whole world mar-
vels to see tlie inert masses vibrating at the least
word he utters, the roar of ocean stilling before
that voice, the billowy multitude hushed at his
feet. . . . Wherefore marvel ? That voice is the
voice of the peo[)le ; mute of itself, it speaks in this
man, and God in him. Here is, in truth, the " T'^ae
I'opuli, vox Dei."
Is he God, or man ? To express the instinct of
genius, must we seek out mystic names — inspiration?
revelation ? This is the tendency of tiie vulgar,
which must forge gods for themselves. Instinct?
Nature? " Fie! " they exclaim. " Had it only been
instinct, we should not have been led away'. . . .
It is inspiration from on high, it is God's well
beloved; it is a God, a new Messiah!" Rather
than admire a man, than admit the superiority of
one's fellow, we make him inspired of God, and, if
needs be, Go<l. Each says to himself that nothing
less than such a supernatural light could so far
have dazzled him. . . . And so we place beyond
the pale of nature, of observation, and of science,
him who was true nature, him whom of all men
science must watch ; we exclude from humanity
him who alone was man. . . . An imprudent adora-
tion rejects to the heavens this man, pi-e-eminently
man, isolates him from the land of the living, where
he had taken root. . . . Ah ! leave him amongst us,
him who is the giver of life here below. Let him
remain man, let him remain people. Separate
him not from children, from the poor and simple,
where his heart is; exile him not on an altar. Let
him be surrounded by this crowd of which he is
the spii'it; let him plunge into full, fecund life, live
with us, suffer with us. He will draw out of his
participation in our sufferings and weaknesses the
strength which God has buried there, and which
will be his genius itself.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BIRTH OF GENU'S, TYPE OF THE BIRTH OF SOCIETY.
If perfection is not to be found here below, the
nearest approach to it is apparently the well-poised
and creative man, who manifests his inward ex-
cellence by a superabundance of love and of
strength, and who proves it not only by fleeting
acts, but by immortal works, by which his great
soul will remain associated with all maiddnd. His
superabundant gifts, fecundity, and the lasting cha-
racter of his creations are, seemingly, the sign that
in him we are to find the copiousness of nature,
and the model of art. And the philosophy of so-
ciety, the most complicated of all arts, ought to
consider well, whether this master-piece of God, in
whom the richest diversity is hai-monized in the
most creative unity, cannot throw some light on
the objects of its researches. Allow me, then, to
dwell upon the characteristics of genius, to pene-
trate into its inward harmony, and to review the
wise economy and well-regulated police of that
great moral city which dwells in the soul of man.
Genius, the inventive and generating power, sup-
poses, as I have already explained, that the same
man is endowed with two powers, that he com-
bines in himself what may be called the two
sexes of the mind — the instinct of the simple, the
reflection of the wise. He is, in a manner, male
and female, infant and mature, barbarous and ci-
vilized, people and aristocracy. This duality,
which is a subject of astonishment to the rest of
mankind, and which the vulgar often regard as a
whimsical phenomenon, a monstrosity, is the very
thing which makes him, in perfection, the normal
and legitimate type of man. To say the truth, he
alone is man, and there are no othere. The siniple
is only half a man, the critic half a man ; they
46
THE PEOPLE.
do not procreate ; still less the mediocre, who may
be called neuter, being of neither sex. He who is
the only perfect one, is the only one who can pro-
ci'eate ; and he is charged with continuing the di-
vine creation. All the rest are sterile, with the ex-
ception of the moments in which they reconstruct
for themselves by love, a sort of double unity ;
their idiosyncrasies, transmitted by generations,
remain powerless, until they encounter the perfect
man, who alone has the generative virtue. It is
not that the instinctive spark, the spark of inspi-
ration, has been wanting in all these men, but that
reflection soon freezes it up, or obscures it in them.
It is the privilege of genius to have inspiration
precede reflection ; the flame bursts into a blaze
at once. In others, everything drags slowly on,
in a halting progi'ession ; and the interval that
occurs renders them sterile. Genius fills up the
interval, joins the two extremities, annihilates
time, is a lightning-flash of eternity. . . . Instinct,
rapid here, touches the act and becomes act; the
idea, thus concentrated, quickens and engenders.
There are those who, now vulgar, have been
endowed in the germ with this fecund duality of
the two persons, of the simple and the critical, but
their natural perversity has soon destroyed the
harmony of the two ; with their first acquisitions
in knowledge, pride has come, subtlety — the cri-
tical has killed the simple. Reflection, idiotically
proud of its precocious virility, has despised in-
stinct as infantile. Puffed up by vanity and its
aristocratic longings, it has joined at the first pos-
sible instant the glittering crowd of sophists, and,
shrinking from their laughter, has denied the
humble relationship of the people. It has gone
far beyond them ; and, for fear of them, has im-
piously mocked its own brother. ... Its punish-
ment is to remain alone ; alone, it does not con-
stitute a man, for this man is impotent.
Genius rises supei-ior to this mean policy; and
so far from stifling its internal fire, through dread
of the world's laughter, does not even know what
it means. Reflection, in it, is accompanied by
neither bitterness nor irony ; and so is tender over
the infancy of instinct. This instinctive half, re-
quires to be spared by the other. Weak and un-
certain, it is liable to rash precipitancy, because
hurried on by its aspirations, and blinded with
love, it rushes to meet the light. Reflection is
well aware that if superior, from already possess-
ing that light, she is inferior to instinct as regards
generative warmth, and the concentration of living
powers. The question between them is one of age
rather than of dignity. The instinctive is the first
form thought takes. The reflection of to-day was
the instinct of yesterday. Which is the more po-
tent of the two ? Who can tell. . . . The youngest
and weakest has, perhaps, the advantage. . . There
can be no d(jubt, I repeat, that the fecundity of
genius depends, in great part, on the goodness,
gentleness, and simplicity, of heart with which it
welcomes the feeble essays of instinct. It wel-
comes them in itself, in its inward world, and in its
outward as well, in man and in nature. It sympa-
thizes every where with the simple ; and its ready
indulgence is ever evoking from limbo new germs
of thought. They fly to it of themselves. Innume-
rable things, yet without form, which wandered
solitary and disi-egarded, fearlessly rush to it. And
the man of genius, he of the piercing look, heeds
not whether they are without form and rude, but
gives them smiling welcome, warms to them because
they are things of life, absolves and extols them. . .
And this benevolence insures him an inestimable
advantage, since, from every quarter, he is en-
riched, aided, fortified ; whilst to all others the
world is a sandy desert, where they seek and do
not find.
How is it that love enters not this soul saturated
with the living gifts of nature ? A loved object pre-
sents itself. . . . Whence ? One cannot say. 'Tis
enough, it is loved. It proceeds to grow and live in
him, as he himself lives in nature, welcoming what-
ever comes, thriving on everything, expanding and
enlarging into beauty, becoming the flower of
genius as lie himself is the flower of the world.
Sublime type of adoption ! . . . This embryo,
which but now was hardly visible, hatched under
the paternal eye, acquires organization, vitality,
bursts forth into brilliant being— is a great inven-
tion, a work of art, a poem. . . I admire this
beauteous creation in its result ; but how much
rather would I have traced its generation, and
penetrated into the mysteiy of the tender in-
cubation under which began its life, its heat !
Men of power, ye in whom God works these grand
things, deign to tell us yourselves which was the
sacred moment that the invention, the work of art,
flashed upon you for the first time ? What were
the first words spoken by your soul and this new-
born being ? what the dialogue that took place
within you between old wisdom and young creation?
what the tender reception ? how the former en-
couraged the latter, still rude and unformed,
fashioned it without changing it, and, far from
chaining it down, did all to render it free and
make it truly herself ? Ah 1 were you to reveal
this, you would clear up not only art, but moral
art as well, the art of education and of policy.
Did we know how genius cultivates its ow-n darling
idea, how lives with it, and the skill and gentleness
with which, without impairing its originality, it
warms it to take life and form according to its
nature, we should have attained at once the rule of
art, and a model for education and initiation into
the duties of life. Goodness of God, 'tis here we
must contemplate you ! It is in this superior
soul, where wisdom and instinct are so finely
harmonized, that we must seek the type for every
Social work. The soul of the man of genius, that
divine soul, plainly divine, since, like God, it creates,
is the internal city on which we must model the
external one to render this divine also.
This man is harmonious and productive when
the two men that iire within him, the simple and
the reflective, mutually understand and aid one
another. Well ! society will be raised to its highest
degree of harmony and productiveness whenever
(he cultivated and reflective classes, by welcoming
and adopting the men of instinct and of action,
shall receive heat from them and lend them light.
Here it may be objected, " But how great the
difference. See you not that in the soul of one
only man the internal city is composed of like and
like. Where the ])ropinquity is so close, approxi-
mation is easy. In the political city how different
and discordant are the elements, how varied the
opposing forces ! The datum here is infinitely
more complex — what do I say ? one of the two
objects compared is almost the exact reverse of
UNION OF THE SIMPLE AND THE REFLECTIVE,
47
the other : in one I descry only peace, and in the
othei" war." Would to heaven the objection were
well-founded and admissible ? Would to God, dis-
cord were only to be found in the external city,
and that in the internal one, in the apparent unity
of the individual, there were truly ])eace ! . . .
But I feel it to be the reverse. . . The general
battle of the world is still less discordant than that
which is going on within me, the dispute of myself
with myself, the combat of the double man (homo
duplex). This warfare is visible in every man. If
there be truce and peace in the man of genius, the
cause depends on a fine mystery, on the inward
sacrifices made by his opposing ])owers to one
another. Never forget that the basis of art, like
that of society, is sacrifice.
Nobly is the struggle rewarded. The woi'k,
which one would take to be inert and passive,
modifies its workman. It ameliorates him morally,
and thus recompenses the fostering cares of the
grand artist when it was young, weak, and without
form. He made it, but it makes him ; in pro-
portion to its own growth it dignifies him, and
makes him great and good. If it were not for the
burden cast upon him of the miseries, necessities,
and hostile fatalities of the whole world, it would
be made manifest that there is no man of genius
but who, for worth of heart, is a hero. All these
inward trials, of which the world is not aware,
preserve genius from all miserable pride. If he
repel, in the name of his work, the stupid laughter
of the vulgar, it is on account of his work, and not
for his own sake ; in himself, he remains he-
roically gentle, always the child, the simple, the
people. However great his achievements, he is
ever with the little ones. He suffers the crowd of
the self-conceited and woi-ldly wise to disport
themselves in the void, and exult in jeers, so-
phisms, negations. Let them speed in triumph,
as they list, along the beaten paths of the world. . .
He stays tranquilly there, where all the simple
will come, on the steps of the throne of the Father.
And it is through him that they will ascend
thither. What other sta_v, what protector have
they than he ? He is the common heritage of
these disinherited ones, their glorious indemnifi-
cation. He is the voice of these dumb ones, the power
of these powerless ones, the tardy fulfilment of all
their aspirations : in him, finally, they are glorified,
by him saved. He draws and bears them vip in
the long chain of classes and genera into which
they are divided — women, children, the ignorant,
the poor in intellect, and with them our humble
companions of labour, who have been animated by
pure instinct only, and, behind these, the infinite
tribes of inferior life as far as instinct extends.
They all claim kindred with the simple one,
at the gate of the city, into which they will, sooner
or later, be admitted. " What do you here ? Who
ai'e you, poor simple things ?" " The younger
brothers of the eldest born of God."
CHAPTER IX.
REVIEW OP THE PRECEDIKG PART. — INTRODUCTION TO
THE THIRD.
The impulsive feelings of my heart have hurried
me far away, too far perhaps. 1 wanted to charac-
terize popular instinct, to show in it those springs of
life from which the cultivated classes ought now-a-
days to seek renewal of youth ; I wanted to prove to
these classes, born of yesterday and already worn
out, the need they have to draw nigh to the people,
from whom they spring. And in order to discover
the genius of this people, disfigured by its mis-
fortunes, and impaired by its very advancement, I
have felt it essential to study it in its purest cle-
ment, the people of children, and the simple ;
amongwhom God preserves for us the stores of living
instinct, the treasure of eternal youth. But it h.is
happened that these very children, these simple
ones whom I have called upon to bear witness on
behalf of the people in this my book, have put in a
claim of their own. I could not but listen to them,
and vindicate them as well as 1 could, from the
contempt of the world. I have asked, on behalf of
the child, how it hajipens that the harshness of the
middle-age is still kept up towards him. What !
you have rejected from your ci'eed and from life the
cruel fatalism which took for granted that man was
born corrupt in consequence of a fault which he did
not commit, and yet, as regards the child, you act
upon this gratuitous supposition. You chastise the
innocent, and you deduce from an hypothesis whose
adherents are daily falling off, an education of
punishments. You stifle and gag the young prophet;
the Joseph or Daniel who alone can solve the
enigma which pei-plexes you, and expound your for-
gotten dream !
If you maintain that man's instinct is evil, cor-
rupt from his birth, and that man can only be
rendered worthy in proportion as he is chastised,
amended, and metamorphosed by knowledge or
school divinity, you hare passed sentence on the people,
both the people of children, and the peoples, cJiil-
dren still, whom we call savages or barbarians.
This lias been a murderous prejudice for all the
poor sons of instinct. It has made the cultivated
classes disdain and hate the uncultivated ; has
cursed children with the hell of our system of edu-
cation ; and has stamped with authority innume-
rable ridiculous and mischievous fables concerning
the peoples, still children, which have in no slight
degree encouraged us, self-styled Christians, in ex-
terminating these people. One of the objects of
my book is to screen these savages or barbarians,
to shelter their poor remnant. Another moment,
and it will be too late. The work of extermination
is going rapidly on. In less than half a century,
how many nations have I seen disappear ! Where
now are our allies, the Scotch highlanders ? An
English bailiff" has driven forth the people of Fingal
and of Robert Bruce. Where ai-e our other friends,
the North American Indians, whose hands our old
France had so nobly clasped ? Alas! I have just
seen the last of the race exhibited as a show. . . .
The Anglo-American traders and puritans, in the
density of their unsympathetic ignorance, have
trampled upon, famished, and will soon have anni-
hilated these hei-oic races who will leave a void for
ever u])on earth, and a lasting regret to humanity.
With these ruins before htr, and the destruction
now going on in the north of India, in the Cau-
casus, and in Libanus, may France timely perceive
that our interminable war in Africa has been thus
protracted by our mistaking the genius of the
peoide, from whom we keep aloof, without an effort
to dispel the mutual ignorance and the misunder-
standing which it occasions. They confessed but
48
THE PEOPLE.
the other day, that they only fought against us
because they believed us to be enemies to their
religion, which is the Unity of God. They know
not that France, and almost all Europe, have shaken
off the idolatrous beliefs which obscured the idea
of the divine Unity during the middle age. Bona-
parte told them this at Cairo : who will repeat it
to them now ? The mist between the two shores
will, one day or other, dispei-se, and they will re-
cognize each other. Africa, whose races so afRne
to our race of the South ; Africa, whom I at times
recognize among my most distinguished friends of
the Pyrenees and of Provence, will render France
a great service ; she will explain many things in
her which are despised and misunderstood. We
shall then better comprehend the rough popular
sap of our mountain races, of our districts which
have been kept most fi'ee from foreign admixture.
Certain mannerisms, as I have already said, which
are set down as rude and gross, will be found to
be barbarian, and link ours with the African races,
barbarian, I admit, but in no degree vulgar.
Barbarians, savages, children, the people even (for
the greatest part), have this misery in common, —
that their instinct is mistaken, and that they them-
selves cannot make us comprehend it. They are
as if dumb, and suffer and die away in silence ;
and we hear nothing of this,scarcely know it. The
African dies of hunger on his devastated Silo ; dies
and complains not. The Eui'opean slaves to death,
and ends in an hospital, unknown. The child, even
the child of a wealthy man, languishes and cannot
complain ; none will hearken to him. The middle
age, over as regards us, still exercises its barbarian
tyi'anny over him.
Strange spectacle ! On one hand, beings full of
young and potent life . . . but which, as if bound
by a spell, cannot communicate their thoughts and
gi'iefs. On the opposite hand, other beings who
have amassed all the instruments humanity has
ever forged for analyzing, for expressing thought,
language, classification, and logic and rhetoric, but
life is weak in them. . . . They require these dumb
ones, in whom God has poured his sap to over-
flowing, to spare them a drop.
Who would not offer up vows for this grand
people, who, from humble and obscure regions,
aspire scale upwards gropingly, without light to
mount, and not having a voice even to utter their
groans withal ? . . . But their silence speaks. . . .
It is reported of Csesar, that, whilst coasting along
the shores of Afi'ic, he had a dream. He saw as
if a great army, weeping and extending their arms
to him imploringly. When he awoke, he wrote on
his tablets Corinth and Carthage; and he rebuilt
the two cities. I am not Ctesar ; but how often
have I not had Caesar's dream ! I saw them weep-
ing, I understood those tears : — " Urhem orant."
They want their City ; they pray her to receive and
protect them. . . . Poor solitary dreamer that I
am, what could I give to this grand voiceless people ?
All I had — a voice. . . . May it be their first
entry into the City of right, from which they have
been hitherto excluded. I have given a voice in
this book to those who are not in a capacity to
know whether they have a right in the world. All
those who groan or suffer in silence, all who ai'e
aspiring and struggling towards life, are my people.
. . . They are the People. May they all enter with
me! Why cannot I aggrandize the City into solidity?
She totters, crumbles, as long she is incomplete, ex-
clusive, unjust. Her justice is her solidity. But
if she wishes to be just only, she will not even be
just. She must be holy and divine, founded by
Him who can alone found.
And she will be divine, if, instead of jealously
closing her gates, she calls unto her all God's child-
I'en, the lowest, the humblest (wo to him who shall
blush to own his brother !). Let all, without dis-
tinction of class, without classification, weak or
strong, simple or wise, bear hither their wisdom or
their instinct. These powerless, these incapable
ones, ndserabiles personce, who can do nothing for
themselves, can do much for us. They have in them
a mystery of unknown power, a hidden fecundity,
living sources in the depths of their nature. When
she summons them, the city summons that life
which can alone renew her. Here, then, after this
long divorce, may man be happily reconciled unto
man and unto nature ; may pride in all its various
shapes be cast off ; may the City of Protection ex-
tend from heaven to the abyss, vast as the bosom
of God !
For my own part, I solemnly swear, that if there
remain but one behind, whom she shall reject and
not shelter with her right, I will not enter, but re-
main on the threshold.
PART THE THIRD.
OF ENFRANCHISEMENT BY LOVE.— OUR NATIVE LAND.
CHAPTER I.
FRIENDSHIP.
It is a great glory for our old communes of France
to have been the discoverers of the true name of
our native land. In their just thinking and pro-
foundly sensitive simplicity, they named it.
Friendship*. And, indeed, one's native land is
• The feeling did not extend beyond '.he commune : they
said, the Friendship of Lille, the Friendship of Aire, — see
Michelet's History of France, vol. ii. p. 189, in Whittaker's
" Popular Library."
the great friendship which comprehends all others.
I love France, because she is France, and also be-
cause she is the country of those whom I love and
those whom I have loved. Our native land, that
great Friendship in which all our attachments
centre, is first revealed to us by them ; when, in
her turn, she generalizes, extends, and ennobles
them, the friend grows into a whole people. The
first stages of this grand initiation are our personal
friendships, which are so many stations through
which the soul passes, and by which she gradually
ascends until she learns to recognize and love her-
FRIENDSHIP.
49
self ill that better, more disinterested, loftier soul,
called Native Land. I say disinterested, because
wherever this love is strong it compels us to mutual
love, despite opposition of interests, difference of
conditions, and inequality. It elevates us all, poor,
rich, great, little, above all our pitiful envyings ;
and is truly Great Friendship, because it renders
heroic. They who are united by it are solidly
united; their attachment will endui-e as long as the
Native Laud endures. What do I say '. She is
no where more indestructible than in their im-
mortal souls. Though ended in the world and in
history, though engulphed in the bosom of the
globe, she would survive as Friendship.
To listen to our philosophers, it would seem as if
man were so insensible a being that it would require
the most painful efforts of art and meditation to
invent the ingenious machine which should bring
man and man togetlier. Now the slightest glance
shows me that he is sociable from his birth. Be-
fore his eyes are opened, he loves society. He
weeps the moment he is left alone. . . . And liow
be surprised at this ? On the very day which we
call his first day of life, he parts from a society the
tender intimacy of which he has been long enjoy-
ing, and in which he had his beginning. When
already aged by nine months, he is compelled to
a divorce from it, to enter into solitude, and to
grope about to find a shadow of the dear union,
which was his, and which he has lost. He loves
his nurse and his mother, so loves that he seems
hardly able to distinguish them from himself. . . .
But what ecstasy of joy is his when he first sees
another, a child of his own age, who is himself, yet
not himself ! The liveliest joys of love will hardly
yield him the transport of that moment. Family,
nurse, mother even, for a time, yield to the com-
jMuion ; all is forgotten for him. Look at this
spectacle ; see how little nature is embari-assed by
inequality, that stumbling-block of politicians. So
far the contrary, it delights, in all the relations of
the heart, to sport with differences and inequalities
which seemingly oppose insurmountable obstacles
to union. Woman, for instance, loves man, pre-
cisely because he is the stronger. The child loves his
friend, often because he is the superior. They
delight in inequality as affording them opportuni-
ties of devotion, as being a ground for emulation, as
yielding the hope of equalit}'. The dearest wish of
the heart is to make the other its equal ; its fear to re-
main the superior, to preserve an advantage which
he has not. It is the singular chai'acteristic of the
beautiful friendships of childhood, that inequality
forms their most powerful bond. There must be
inequality for there to be aspiration, exchange, re-
ciprocity. The charm of the friendship of children
arises from the analogy of their character and
habits, the inequality of their minds and education.
The weak follows the strong without servility or
envy, listens to him with ecstasy, and finds happi-
ness in giving way to the attraction of initiation.
Friendship, whatever be said to the contrary, is
a much more powerful means of progress than
ove. Love, like it, is no doubt an initiation, but it
cannot create emulation between those whom it
unites. Lovers differ by sex and nature. The
least advanced of the two cannot make any great
change, so as to resemble the other ; the effort at
mutual assimilation is soon checked. The spirit of
rivalry, which is soon awakened iu girls, lies much
longer dormant in boys. It takes school, college,
and all the master's efforts to arouse its unhappy
passions. Man, in this point of view, is born gene-
rous, heroic. Ho nui.st be taught envy, for he
knows it not of himself. Ah ! how right ho is,
how much does he not gain by it ! Love neither
counts, nor measures, nor sets about calculating a
mathematical, rigorous equality, which can never
be attained. Its longing is to go far beyond it.
Most frequently it creates, in opposition to the in-
equality of nature, an inequality in an inverse
sense. Between man and wife, for instance; it often
makes the stronger choose to be the servant of
the weaker. As the family inci'eases, when the
child is born, the privilege becomes that of the
new comer. The inequality of nature favoured the
strong, that is the father ; the iuequality substi-
tuted by love favours the weak, the weakest of all,
and makes him first. Such is the beauty of the
natural family ! The beauty of the artificial family
is to favour the son by adoption, the son of the
choice, dearer than the son by nature. The ideal
of the City, and which ought to be her model, is the
adoption of the weak by the strong, inequality to
the advantage of the weak. Aristotle says excel-
lently, iu opposition to Plato, " The City is com-
posed not of similar, but of dissimilar men." To
which I add, " Dissimilar, but brought into har-
mony, and rendered more and nuire similar by
love." Democracy is love in the City, and miti-
ation.
The initiation of patronage, Roman or feudal,
was artificial, and the result of circumstance. We
ought to come back to man's natural and invari-
able relations. And what are these ? . . . You
need not go far to find them. You have but to
look at man before he is enslaved by passion, bro-
ken down by hard education, embittered by rivalry.
Take him, before he feels love or envy. What find
you in him? That which to him is the most natu-
ral of all things, the first (ah ! may it also be the
last !) friendship. Soon shall I be old. Inde-
pendently of my age, history has heaped two or
three thousand years upon me, with countless
events, passions, and many-coloured recollections,
in which my own life, and that of the world, are
confusedly mingled. Well ! amongst all these
countless gi'eat events, and poignant remembrances,
there is one thing which stands out prominently,
triumphantly, which is ever young, fresh, flourish-
ing— my first friendship.
Well do I call to my mind (much more vividly
and readily than I can my thoughts of yestci-day)
the immense, the insatiable desire we felt of com-
munications, confidences, mutual disclosures,' to
which neither words nor paper sufficed. After
long walks, one would see the other home, the
other would then insist on seeing him home.
What joy to feel of a morning, how much one had
to tell of ! I would be off early, in my strength
and freedom, out of my impatience to speak, to
resume the conversation, to confide innumerable
things. " What secrets ? What mysteries ?" None;
some historical fact, perhaps, or some verses of
Virgil, which I had just learned. . . . And how
often would I mistake the hour ! At four or five
o'clock of a morning, I was there, knocking,
making them get up and open the door, awakening
my friend. How paint with words the airy, vivid
lights, in which all things were bathed of these morn-
50
THE TEOPLE.
iugs and on the wing 1 My life seemed to fly, and of
a spring morning the impression will sometimes
come back to me. 1 felt, lived in Aurora. Age
ever to be regretted, true paradise on earth, un-
conscious of hate, or contempt, or baseness, where
inequality is altogether unknown, and when society
is still truly human, truly divine! . . . Too fleeting
age. luterest comes, competition, rivalry. . . .
And yet some sparks of the ethereal flame would
be left, did but education labour as hard to unite
men as she does to divide them. If only two
children, the one poor, the other rich, had sat
ou the same form of the same school, if united by
friendship, divided by pursuits, they were to see
each other frequently, they would do more among
them than all the politicians, all the moralists in
the world. By their disinterested, innocent friend-
ship, they would pi'eserve the sacred bond of the
City. The rich one would know life, its inequality,
would groan over it, and strenuously strive to take
his share of it. The poor one would rise to great-
ness of heart, and would console him for being
rich. How live, without knowing life ? Now we
can only know it by paying for the knowledge, by
suff'ering, toiling, being poor ; or else by makmg
oneself poor through sympathy and heart, and
voluntarily participating in toil and suffering.
What can a rich man know, though his mind
be stored w^ith all the learning of the schools ?
Life being made smooth to him, he must be
ignorant of its deep and powerful realities. Neither
investigating nor resting, he runs and glides as on
ice. He enters nowhere, but is ever on the out-
side. In this rapid, external, and superficial state
of existence, he will have reached his term to-
morrow, and will depart in ignorance as he came.
What he wanted was a solid point on which he
might rest, and from which he might investigate,
with all the energies of his soul, life and know-
ledge. The poor, on the contrary, is fixed on one
obscure point, unable to see or heaven or earth.
And his want is the power to raise himself up,
to bi'eathe, and contemplate the sky. Riveted to
this spot by fatality, he requires to extend himself,
to generalize his existence and even his sufferings,
to transport his life out of this spot on which
he suffers, and, since his soul is infinite, to expand
it infinitely. . . He lacks all the means. Laws
will do little for him ; friendship alone can eff"ect
what he wants. The man of leisure, of cultivated
mind, and reflective habits, ought to liberate this
captive soul, and to restore it to its relations with
the world. What, change it ? No ; but aid it to
become itself, and remove the obstacle which
hindered it from unfolding its wings.
All this would become easy, were each of the
two to comprehend that he can only receive his
enfranchisement from the other. The man of
science and of cultivation, at present the slave of
abstractions and of formulas, can only regain his
liberty by contact with the man of instinct. That
very youth and life, which he thinks to renew by
distant voyages, is here, close at hand; he will find
it in the childhood of society ; I mean, in the
people. And, on the other hand, he who is im-
mured in his ignorance and his isolation as in a
prison, will extend his horizon and will emerge
into open air, if he will accept the overtures of
knowledge, and if, instead of enviously calumni-
ating it, he will respect in it the accumulation
of the laboui's of humanity, the entire efl'ort of the
anterior man. I acknowledge that their entering
on this path of mutual assistance, this serious and
vigorous reciprocal culture, presupposes in both
true magnanimity. We appeal to their heroism,
and what appeal worthier of man ? What more
natural, from the moment he returns to himself,
and, with God's grace, rises once more.
The heroism of the poor man is to immolate envy,
to rise so superior to his own poverty, as not even
to deign to inquire whether the riches of his fellow
be well or ill gained. The heroism of the rich
consists, whilst recognizing the right of the poor
man, in loving him and seeking him. — " Heroism ?
... Is not this mere duty?" No doubt; but it is
precisely the knowledge of its being a duty which
closes the heart. Sad mfirmity of our nature. We
seldom love but those to whom we owe no duty, the
deserted, unarmed being who threatens us with no
right. Both ways the heart must enlarge. They
have taken democracy by right and by duty, by the
law; whilst they have only had the dead law. . . .
Ah ! let us retake it by grace ! — you will say,
" What is this to us ? We will make such wise
laws, so cunningly drawn up and combined, that
there will be no need of loving." . . . The wish
for wise laws, and the inclination to obey them,
must be preceded by love. " But how is it pos-
sible to love V See you not the insurmountable
barriers, which interest raises up between us ?
With the overwhelming competition with which we
are struggling, how can we be simple enough to aid
our rivals, and stretch forth oui" hand to-day to
those who will become so to-morrow ? Humiliat-
ing confession ! What, for a little money, for some
wretched place which you will soon lose, you de-
liver up man's treasure, all that is good and great
within him, friendship, native land, the true life
of the heart. Miserable man ; so near to, so far
from the Revolution, have you already forgotten
that the foremost men m the world, our young
generals, in their terrible career, their violent race
to an immortal death which they all disputed with
each other — desperate rivals for the beauteous mis-
tress who lights up the fiercest love in the human
heart, Victory ! were unconscious of jealousy?
That glorious letter by which the conqueror of
Vendd'e shielded with his virtue and his popularity
the man who was already an object of suspicious
dread — the conqueror of Areola — and pledged
himself for him, will remain to latest times * . . .
Ah ! great epoch, great men, true conquerors, who
would subdue everything; you conquered envy as
easily as you did the world ! Noble soids, wher-
ever you may be, save us by breathing into us a
spark of your spirit !
* Letter written by Hochc to the minister of police, at
the time a report ran that Bonaparte was to be arrested for
acting without orders from the Directory, after his conquest
of Italy; and in which the writer exclaims:— "Courage,
Bonaparte, lead our victorious armies to Naples, to Vienna;
let thy answer to thy personal enemies be the humbling of
kings, and the lending new lustre to our arms. Leave
the care of thy glory to us !"
LOVE AND MARRIAGE.
5]
CHAPTER II.
OF lOVE AND MARRIAGE.
To undertake to discuss such :i subject in a fewpages
were to be insensible to its gravity. 1 shall confine
myself to insisting upon one important point, which,
in our existing state of manners, is essential. Indif-
ferent as wo are to our native land and to the world,
being neither citizens nor philanthropists, there is
but one particular in which we pretend to discard
our selfishness, and this is as regards our families.
To be a good father is a merit which is loudly trum-
peted, and often most profitably. Yet, it must be
confessed that in the higher classes the family tie is
in most perilous state, and, if things go on as they
ai'e, cannot exist. The men are accused of this,
and not without reason. I have myself spoken
elsewhere of their materialism, their harshness, the
singular want of skill with which they forfeit their
ascendancy soon after marriage. Still I must own
that the fault lies chiefly with the wives, that is, with
the mothers. The education they give their
daughters, or which they suffer them to receive, has
made marriage an intolerable burden.
The scenes that pass before us, remind one but
too forcibly of the latter ages of the Roman empire,
when women, having become the inheritors of
large fortunes, presuming on their wealth, and
acting the patroness towards their husbands, ren-
dered the condition of the latter so miserable, that
no pecuniary advantage or legislative power could
persuade men to undex'go such slavery. They pi-e-
ferred flying to the desert, and the Thebaid was
peopled. Alarmed at the depopulation, the legis-
lature was obliged to favour and regulate those
inferior ties which were the only ones into which
men would enter ; and perhaps it would be the
same with us now if we did not entertain more
chapman-like views, and speculate on marriage.
Necessity or cupidity impels us to accept the
chances which deterred the Romans. 'Tis an
unsafe speculation. The young wife knows the
fortune she brings, but not the worth of money,
and so spends more than before. Judging by
what I have myself seen, I should say, " If you
want to ruin yourself, marry a rich wife."
I am aware of all the inconveniences attendant
on taking a wife inferior in birth and breeding to
yourself, and the greatest of which is, the isolation
to which it condemns you, by cutting you off from
your former associates and associations. Another
is, that you do not mari'y your wife only, but her
whole family, of, perhaps, rude and coarse habits.
And if you try to raise her, and to form her for
yourself and as youi'self, it will often happen that,
though possessing a happy instinct and a certain
degree of willingness, she is not to be raised. The
tardy education, attempted to be given to the vigo-
rous, but less malleable, and harder races of the
people, has seldom taken hold of them. Acknow-
ledging these inconveniences, I nevertheless recur
to the far more serious one attendant on the bril-
liant marriages of the present day, and which
consists simply in one thing, — life there is ati im-
possibility. For your life consists in beginning
every evening, after a day of labour, a still more
fatiguing day of amusements and pleasures. There
is nothing like it in all Europe, nothing similar
among the people. The Frenchman of the rich
classes is the only man in the world who never
rests. And this is, perhaps, the chief reason why
our uewly-enriclied men, our bounjeuis, a class
sprung up yesterday, is already worn out. In this
working age, in which time is of incalculable value,
serious, productive men, who look at results, can-
not accept, as the condition of marriage, so enor-
mous an expenditure of life. The night, consumed
in taking the wife from one party to another, kills
the morrow by anticipating upon it. Man needs
his fireside and rest of an evening. He comes
home full of thought, and wants to collect himself
as well as to meet with a congenial heart in which
he may repose his troubles, his anxieties, the day's
vicissitudes, to which he may open his whole bosom.
He comes home to a wife who has done nothing,
but who, dressed, ready, and impatient, is in haste
to make the best of her strength and spirits. . . .
How converse ? — " Very well, sir, 'tis late; we are
behind time ; I can hear all that to-morrow."
He will go, except he chooses to trust her to some
older female friend, who, too often corrupt, spite-
ful, and malicious, will have no gi'eater pleasure
than in exasperating the young wife against her
tyrant, and in committing her by compromising her
in wretched follies. No, he cannot leave her to such
suspicious guidance, but will take her liimself. . . .
With what envy does he note the workman re-
turning late to his home ! Tiie latter, it is true,
has been hard-worked the whole day long; but he
is going Avhere rest, home, and the lawful hajipiness
with which God has gifted his evenings, summon
him. His wife is expecting him, coiuiting the
minutes ; the cloth is laid ; wife and child ai-e at
the door looking out for his coming. If he be but
a moderately deserving Imsband, all her vanity
centres in liim ; she admires, reveres him. . . .
How full of thoughtful care she is ! I see her, out
of their scanty meal, without his perceiving it,
taking the poorest portion for herself, and resei'v-
ing for her husband, who has most to bear, the
nourishing food which will recruit his strength.
He goes to bed ; she puts her children to bed, and
sits up working far into the night. At earliest
dawn, long before he opens his eyes, she is up, all
is ready, both his warm breakfast and the dinner
he takes along with him. He is off to his work,
after embracing wife and sleeping children, con-
tented at heart, and easy as to those lie leaves
behind. This I have said, and say again, is hap-
piness. She feels that she is supported by him,
and is blessed in the idea ; and he works the more
contentedly, knowing that he works for her. Such
is true marriage. " A humdrum life," you say.
No, the child vivifies it. . . . And if the supreme
spark were added,— if the workman, together with
a little security and leisure, had moments of njore
exalted life, could make his wife the companion of
his studies, and kindle her mind by his . . . 'twould
be too much. All that we should ask from Heaven
would be such an eternity here below.
This was the happiness you might have enjoyed,
sad victim of cupidity ; but you have sacrificed it.
Regret now the humble maiden whom you loved,
who loved you : regret her bitterly. Was it wise
(putting honour and humanity out of the question),
to bruise this poor creature, and to bruise your own
heart, in order to wed slavery \ The money you
coveted will make itself wings and escape from
your hands. The children of this unloving union,
conceived of a calculation, will bear on tlieir pale
face the mark of their sad origin ; their un-
e2
THE PEOPLE.
harmonious existence testify to tlie divorce which
this marriage bore within itself ; they will not
have the heart to live. Was thei-e so great a
difterence between this girl and that ; after all,
both ai'e of ihe people. The father of the wealthier,
is a workman wlio has risen to wealth. There is
no gulph betwixt the true unmixed people and the
people bourgeois, the bastard classes. If the bour-
geoisie want to recover from their exhaustion, they
will entertain fewer fears of marrying into families
which are to-day what they were yesterday, and
where are strength, beauty, and a hopeful future.
Our young men marry late, after a life of dissi]>a-
tion, and commonly some young sickly girl. The
offspring die, or lead an ailing life. In the second
and third generations, the bourgeoisie will be as
puny as our nobles were before the Revolution.
And it is not only the physical which deteriorates,
but the moral. What capability of continuous la-
bour, imj)ortant business, or of great invention can
be expected from a man who, having married for
money, is the slave of his wife and family, and is
obliged to waste on nothings all his time and best
energies ? Tliink what must become of a nation
in which the govei'ning classes expend themselves
in idle talk and empty bustle. ... To make life
fecund, tlie mind must have time to collect itself,
the heart to rest.
A remarkable fact of the present time is, that
the women of the people (who are by no means
coarse like the men, and who feel the want of de-
licacy and attention), listen to men of a station
above their own, with a confidence they did not
formerly exhibit. They used to consider rank an
insurmountable barrier to love, but they do not
seem to think wealth constitutes a line of demarca-
tion between the classes — mere riches seem so lit-
tle in comparison with love ! Touching trust of
the people, v.ho, in their best, most amiable, and
tendere.st half, thus approximate to the superior
ranks, and bring with them vigour, beauty, moral
grace! . . Ah! wo to the seducer ! If inaccessible
to remorse, he will, at the least, experience a bitter
regret, when he thinks that he has lost what is
more worth than all the treasures of the world,
heaven and earth — the being beloved !
CHAPTER III.
OP ASSOCIATION.
I HAVE long studied the ancient " associations" of
France ; of all of which the most charming, in my
opinion, is that of the fishing-nets on the coasts of
Harfleur and Barfleur. Each of these vast nets
(a hundred and twenty brasses, or six liundred feet
long) is divided into numerous lots, which pass by
will to the daughters, as well as the sons ; and
though the former cannot take part in the actual
fishing, they yet mend, and remake their shares of
the nets, which they entrust to the fishermen. So,
the handsome and prudent Norman maiden spins
her own dowry. Her lot of net is her fief, which
she administers with the prudence of the wife of
William the Conqueroi-. Doubly proprietor, in
virtue both of her right and her labour, she re-
quires to know as such all the arrangements of
the fishing voyage. She calculates its chances,
takes an interest in the selection of the crew, and
identifies herself with the risks of this hazardous
employ. Ay, and she sometimes risks more than
her net in the smack. Often the fisherman to
whom she has entrusted her intei-ests during the
voyage, entrusts his happiness to her keepmg on
his return. True country of wisdom. Normandy,
which has served as a type in so many things to
France and England, strikes me as having dis-
covered in this a type of association more worthy
than any other, of being recommended to the at-
tention of futurity. It is quite distinct from the
cheese-making associations of the Jura, where,
after all, they only join iu the risk and profit.
Each brings liis milk to the common cheese, and
has a proportionate return on the sale. But this
collective economy calls for no moral union, puts
selfishness at its ease, and may subsist with all the
unsociableness of individualism. It does not seem
to me deserving of the cheering title of associa-
tion ; whilst that of the Norman fishermen is pre-
eminently so, being quite as moral aud social as
economic. What in reality is it ? A young, well-
disposed, well-conducted girl, out of her labour,
her nightly vigils, and her little savings, enters into
partnership with young men, and entrusts lier for-
tune to their boat before committing her heart.
She has a right to know, to choose, to love the
skilful and successful fisherman. Here we have
an association truly worthy of the name; and which,
far from excluding the natural association of the
family, prepares the ties that are to twist it together,
and so contributes to the grand association, that of
the native land.
Here, my heart fails me, and my pen drops. . . .
I must avow that native land and family reap little
advantage from it now. The [^associations of the
net will soon exist but in history; being already
replaced on many parts of the coast by that which
rej^laces every thing — the bank and the usurer.
Great race of Noi'man seamen, who first dis-
covered America, founded the factories of Africa,
conquered the two Sicilies and England ! am 1
then to meet with you no more save in the tapestry
of Bayeux ? Who but is heart-broken, as he
passes from our cliffs to the Downs, from our
drooping coasts to the opposite ones which teem
with life, from tlie inertia of Chei'bourg to the
burning and terrible activity of Portsmouth ? . . .
What is to me that Havre is filled with American
vessels, with a transit trade which is made by
France, without France, and sometimes agaiust
her ? Heavy malediction ! Truly severe punish-
ment of our unsociability ! Our economists aver
that nothing can be done for free association. Our
academies eflace its name from their prize lists.
Its name is only recognized as that of a crime,
guarded against by our penal laws. One associa-
tion only remains lawful ; the increasing intimacy
between St. Cloud and Windsor.
Some commercial associations have been formed,
but in a selfish point of view, in order to absorb
all the petty channels of trade, and ruin the
smaller tradesman. These have done great harm,
to little profit. The large partnership concerns
which are created in this hope have met with very
indifferent success, and do not improve; whilst every
addition to their number has subti'acted from their
chances. Many have failed ; and those which sub-
sist have no tendency to increase. Turning to the
country, I see our agricultui-al communities of Mor-
van, Berri, and Picardy, all of high antiquity,
gradually breaking up and going to law to enforce
dissolution. They had lasted for centuries, and
many prosperously. And, no doubt, these convents
of married labourers where some twenty families,
united by ties of kindred, were collected together
under one roof, under the superintendence of a
superior of their own election, possessed great
economical advantages. And if I turn from these
peasants to more cultivated minds, I see but
little spirit of association in literature. The men
who ought most naturally to be attracted to one
another by knowledge, and mutual esteem, and
admiration, keep, nevertheless, aloof. Even kin-
dred genius will not induce kindred of heart. I am
acquainted with four or five men here who are,
beyond a doubt, the aristocracy of mankind, whose
only peers and judges are each other, and who,
living at the same time, in the same city, next door
to one another, never meet. Had these men, who
will live for ever, been born in different ages, how
bitterly would they have regretted the impossibility
of ever having known each other.
In one of my pilgrimages to Lyons,! called on some
weavers, and, according to my wont, inquired into
their evils and the I'emedj'. I inquired, particu-
larly, whether it would not be possible for them,
however opposed in opinions, to associate in certain
material, economic respects ? One of them, a man
of great intelligence and high moral endowments,
who was sensible of the feeling which prompted
me, allowed me to go on with my inquiries further
than I had yet done. " The evil," he said at first,
" is the favour shown by government to the manu-
facturers." And, next? " Their monopoly, tyranny,
and exactions." Is this the whole ? He remained
silent two or three minutes, and then gave vent
with a sigh to this important confession: — "There
is yet another evil, sir; we are unsociable." The
words smote my heart like a sentence of death.
Many were my reasons for supposing them just and
true, and often had the thought occurred to me I
" What," I said to myself, " France, the country
renowned above all others for the eminently soci-
able sweetness of its manners and genius, irx'evo-
ably divided and for ever ? ... If this be so, does
a chance of life remain for us, and have we not
already perished, before perishing ? Is our soul
dead within us ? Are we worse than our fathers ;
whose pious associations we ai-e ever being told
of? Is there an end to love and brotherhood in
this world?"
In this gloomy state of mind, resolved, like
a dying man, to ascertain whether I were dying, I
set about seriously examining, not the highest or
the lowest, but a man, neither good nor bad,
a man in whom many classes meet, who has seen,
has suffered, and who, indisputably, both in spirit
and in heart, bears within himself the thoughts of
the people. And this man, who is no other than
myself, though living alone, and voluntai-ily soli-
tary, has none the less remained sociable and
sympathetic. So with many others. An un-
mutable, unalterable fund of sociability sleeps here
in the depth of the masses. 'Tis a fund ever in
reserve, and I descry it everywhere amongst them
as often as I descend, listen, and observe. And
what is there astonishing in the fact of this
instinct of ready sociableness, discouraged as it
has been of late years, shrinking and folding
up within itself ? Deceived by parties, speculated
upon commercially, suspected by government, it
no longer stirs nor operates. All the forces of
society seem directed to cnish the instinct of
sociableness ! They can join stones, and disjoin
men ; no more. Patronage cannot make good
what is wanting to the spirit of association. The
recent appearance of the idea of equality lias
stifled (for a time) the idea which had preceded
it, that of benevolent protection, adoption, paternity.
The rich has sternly said to the poor, " Thou
claimest equality, and the rank of brother. Be it
so. But, from tliis moment, expect no more as-
sistance from me. God imposed upon me the
duties of father. By claiming equality, you have
yourself freed me from them." There is much
less risk of being mistaken as to our people of
France than as regards as any other. No farce of
society, no external difference, changes their socia-
bleness. They have not the humble manners of the
Germans ; nor will they, like the English, stand
hat in hand before wealth and rank. Address
them, they will answer you civilly, cordially, with
an air as much to say, that they yield this to the
individual and not to his standing in society. The
Frenchman has passed through many trials ;
through revolution, through wars. A man so
formed is assuredly hard to guide, and hard to
bring into associatiims. Why ? Because, as indi-
vidual, he knows his own intrinsic worth.
You are making men of iron in your war of
Africa, a war of liand to hand, which is ever
obliging the soldier to rely upon himself. Un-
doubtedly you are in the right to desiderate such,
and to form such on the eve of the crisis wc must
expect in Europe. But you must not be surprised
if these lions, on their return, retain, whilst they
submit to the curb of the laws, some smatch of
their savage independence. And I warn you,
these men can never be brought into associations
except through the he.art and friendship. Do not
fancy you can yoke them to a ner/atire society, in
which the soul will count for nothing, and where
they will live together without love, through feel-
ings of economy and the mildness of their dis-
position ; as, for instance, the German workmen do
at Zurich. The co-operative society of the English,
who unite perfectly well together for any specific
purpose, though, at the same time, hating and
counteracting each other in those where their
interests clash, does not suit our Frenchmen a
whit better. We must have a society of friends in
France ; and herein consists its inferiority, com-
mercially speaking, its superiority, socially. Union
is effected with us neither by pliancy of dispo-
sition and commimity of habits, nor by the hunter's
savage greed, herding together, wolf-like, for the
sake of prey. The only union possible with us is
the union of minds.
This condition secured, there are few forms of
association but what are excellent. The leading
question with this sympathetic people is one of
persons and moral dispositions. " Do the mem-
bers love each other ; do they agree ?"' is ever the
first inquiry to be made. Societies of workmen
may be formed, and will last, if they lore one another;
and societies of master- workmen, likewise, who
shall live as brothers, on an equality, only they
nmst love much. Now loving one another is not
simplj' the feeling of mutual good -will. Nor will
natural attraction of character and similarity of
tastes be sufficient. Each man must follow his
54
THE PEOPLE.
nature, but with heart ; that is to say, must be
ever ready for sacrifice, for the devotion which
immolates nature. What would you do in tliis
world without sacrifice ? Sacrifice is its support ;
without it, the world would topple down this
moment. I will grant you the best instinct, the
most upriglit character, the most perfect natures
(such as are not met with here below) — and yet
the whole world would perish without this uni-
versal remedy.
" To sacrifice oneself to another !" Strange,
unheard of thing, which will scandalize the ears of
our philosophei's, " Immolate oneself. . . for whom?
for a man we know to be less deserving than one-
self ? to foi'feit, for the advantage of this nothing,
an infinite worth ?" for such, in fact, few fail to
give themselves credit for. Now here, we will
acknowledge, is a real difficulty. One seldom
sacrifices oneself save to what is supposed to be
infinite. For sacrifice, a god, an altar is required
— a god in whom men may recognize and love
each other. And how ai'e we to do sacrifice ? We
have lost our gods! — Was the God-word (the Logos),
in the form under which it was envisaged by the
middle-age, this necessai'y bond ? All history is
there to answer. No. The middle-age promised
union, and only gave war. It requii-ed this god
to have his second advent, and to appear upon
earth in his incarnation of '89. He then gave
association at once its vastest and its truest form ;
that which alone can still unite us, and, through us,
save the world.
France, glorious mother, who ai't not ours alone,
but whose destiny it is to bring forth every nation
into liberty, teach us to love one another in you !
CHAPTER IV.
OUR NATIVE LAND. — ARE N ATIOtf ALITIES ABOUT TO
DISAPPEAR?
National antipathies have decreased, the law of
nations been ameliorated, and, in comparison with
the hates of the middle age, we have entered upon
a new era of goodwill and brotherhood. Nations
are already in some degree amalgamated by in-
terests, and have borrowed from each other fashions
and literature. Ai'e we hence to infer that nation-
alities are dying away ? Let us examine. It is
certain that intei-nal distinctions are leaving fewer
traces in evei-y nation. Our French provincialities
are rapidly disappearing. Scotland and Wales
have joined the unity of Britain. Germany is
labouring at her own unity ; and believes herself
ready to sacrifice to it a host of conflicting in-
terests, which have hitherto kept her divided.
There can be no doubt that this sacrifice of
different internal nationalities to the great nation-
ality which embraces them all, contributes to
strengthen the latter. It may perchance efface
the salient, picturesque minutife which charac-
terised a peo])le in the eyes of the superficial ob-
server, but it strengthens the peculiar genius of a
nation, and helps its manifestation. It was at the
moment France suppressed within her bosom all
divergent Frances, that she revealed herself in her
loftiness and originality. She made the discovery
of herself ; and whilst she proclaimed the future
common rights of the world, separated herself
more distinctly from the world than she had ever
done before.
We may say the same of England. With her
machines, ships, and her fifteen millions of work-
men, she differs at this very moment from all
other nations much more than in Elizabeth's day.
Germany, which was blindly groping for herself
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at
last discovei'ed herself in Goethe, Schelling, and
Beethoven ; and it is only from that moment that
she was enabled with any purpose to aspire to
unity. So far from nationalities disappearing, I
see them daily assuming a deeper moral character,
and from collections of men growing into persons.
This is the natural progress of life. Each man, at
the outset, feels his genius confusedly, and in his
early years appears to be like any other man. It
is only as time goes over his head that he learns
to understand himself, and that his character ac-
quires outward expression in his works and acts.
He gradually assumes personality, quits class, and
deserves a name.
I know but two ways of inferring that nation-
alities are about to disappear ; — first, to be ignorant
of history, and to know it only in shallow formulas,
like philosophers, who never study it, or in literary
common places, like women, in order to talk about
it. To those whose knowledge is of either kind,
history appears in the past like a small, obscure
point, which may be blotted out at will : — secondly,
one must be as ignorant of nature as of history, and
forget that national characteristics do not take their
rise in our caprices, but are profoundly based on
the influences of climate, of food, of natural pro-
ductions, and may be modified in degree, but
never effaced. — They who are not fettered by their
acquaintance either with physiology or history, and
who construct humanity without ever enquiring
into man or nature, may be allowed to efface fron-
tiers, fill up rivers, and level mountains. But I
warn them that nations will still last, unless they
take care to sweep away the towns, those grand
centres of civilization, where nationalities have con-
centrated their genius.
Towards the close of the Second Part I observed,
that if God has set anywhere the type of the poli-
tical City, it was in all pi'obability in the moral City,
that is, in the soul of man. Now, what are the
first movements of this soul 1 It fixes itself in one
spot, meditates there, and organizes for itself a
body, a residence, a train of ideas. Then it can
act. In the same manner, the soul of the peo-
ple ought to construct for itself a central point
of organism, seat itself in one spot, collect itself,
meditate, and harmonously identify itself with the
aspect of nature; as infant Rome with the seven
hills, or our France with the sea, the Rhine,
the Alps, and the Pyrenees — our seven hills.
To circumscribe oneself, to carve something for
oneself out of space and time, to bite a piece which
shall be one's own out of the bosom of indifferent
and all-dissolving nature, who seeks ever to con-
found, is power for every life. This is to exist ;
this is to live. A mind fixed on one point will go
on acquiring profundity. A mind, floating in space,
dissipates itself and disappears. The man who
goes on bestowing his love on all things, passes
away without ever having known love. Let him
love once and long, he finds in one passion the in-
finitude of nature, and the whole progi-ess of the
world. The Native Land, the City, far from being
opposed to nature, are the sole and the all-pow-
PERMANENCY OF NATIONALITIES.
55
erful means which the soul of the people resident
there possesses for realising her nature, affording
her at once the point from which to start into life,
and the liberty of development. Fancy the Athe-
nian genius mirnis Athens; it wavers, wanders, is
lost, and dies unknown. Enclosed within the nar-
row but pregnant precincts of such a city, fixed on
that glorious soil where the bee gathers honey from
Sophocles and Plato, the powerful genius of Athens,
of a city hardly perceptible on the earth's broad
surface, has done as much intwoor three centuries,
as twelve nations of the middle age in a thousand.
God's most powerful means of creating and in-
creasing distinctive originality, is to maintain the
world harmoniously divided into those great and
beautiful systems called nations, each of which,
opening to man a different sphere of activity, is a
living education. The more man advances, the
more he enters into the genius of his native land,
the hetter he concurs in the harmony of the globe.
He leai'ns to know this native land both in its
proper and its relative value, as a note in the grand
concert, takes a part in it through her, and in her
loves the world. One's native country forms the ne-
cessary initiation into the universal country. And
so union progi'esses, without there being any danger
of its ever attaining unity, since every nation at
every step it takes towards concord, is more ori-
ginal in itself. If, by an impossibility, diversities
should cease and unity be establislied, as every na-
tion would sing the same note, the concert would
be over. Harmony would give place to a confused,
unmeaning noise ;° and the world, relapsed into
monotony and barbarism, might perish without
leaving a single regret.
But nothing, I feel assured, will perish ; neither
soul of man nor soul of people. We are in too
good hands. No, on the contrary, we shall go
on ever living more, — that is, strengthening our
individuality, and acquiring more potent and fe-
cundating influences. God keeps us from losing
ourselves in him ! . . . And if no soul perishes,
how shall these great souls of nations, with their
vivid genius, their history rich in martyrs and
heroic sacrifices, a history replete with immortality,
how shall they be extinguished ? When but one
of them is eclipsed for a moment, the whole world
is sick in all its nations, and the world of the heart
in its fibres, responsive to the nations. . . . Reader,
the agonized fibre which I see in your heart, is
Poland and Italy. Nationality and our country are
the life of the world. Their death would be the
death of all. Ask the people. They feel this, and
will tell you so. Ask science, history, the expe-
rience of mankind. These two great voices are in
unison. Two voices ? No, two realities ; that
which is and that which was, opposed to vain ab-
straction. This was the belief on which I set my
heart and my history, firm as upon a rock. I
wanted no one to confirm me in my faith. But I
have gone among the multitude ; have questioned
the people, young and old, little and great. All
have borne witness to their country. 'Tis the
living fibre which dies last in their heart. I have
found it among the dead. I have been in the
charnel houses called prisons, bagnes, and there
have dissected ; and in these corpses, where the
breast was a void, what think you I found? . . .
France still ; the last spark, perhaps, which offered
a chance of recalling them to life.
Say not, I beseecli you, that it is nothing to be
born in the land surrounded by the Pyrenees, the
Alps, the Rhine, the ocean. Take the poorest
being, ragged, starved, one whom you would
believe absorbed in material wants ; he will tell you
that to have a share in this innnense glory, this
unique legend which forms the theme of the world,
is a rich inheritance. He knows that if he went
to the woi-ld's extremest desert, alike under the
equator or at the poles, he would find Napoleon,
our armies, our grand history to shield and protect
him ; that the children would fiock to him, and the
aged be mute, and entreat him to speak ; that to
hear him only name those names, they would kiss
the hem of his tattered vestments. For me, what-
ever my fate, poor or rich, happy or unhappy, I
shall ever bless God for having given me this great
country — France. And this, not alone on account
of her many and glorious deeds, but, most of all,
because I find her to be at once the representative
of the liberties of the world, and the country which
forms the bond of sympathy with all the rest, the
initiation into universal love. This last charac-
teristic is so strong in France, that she has often
forgotten herself. And I must now recall her
to herself, and beseecli her to love all nations less
than herself.
Undoubtedly, every great nation represents an
idea important to imiversal man. But, great God,
how much more true is this of France ! Suppose her
eclipsed, or that she perish ; the bond of sympathy
between the world is relaxed, dissolved, broken,
probably destroyed. The love that constitutes the
life of the globe, would be affected in its most vital
part. The earth would enter the frozen age where
other globes, close at hand, have entered. I had
a frightful dream on this very subject, which I must
relate. I was in Dublin, near abridge, walking on
a quay. On looking at the rivei', I saw it fiowing
slowly in a narrow channel, between wide sandy
strands, such as ours at the Quai des Orftvres, and
thought it must be the Seine. Even the quays
were like ; and, with the exception of the rich
shops, of the monuments, the Tuileries, and the
Louvre, it was almost Paris, minus Paris. An ill-
dressed crowd was coming from the bridge; not in
blouses, as with us, but in old grease-spotted coats.
They were quarrelling violently in hoarse, guttural,
barbarous clamour, with a fi'ightful humpback, all
in rags, who is even now before me. Other persons
were passing along, miserable and deformed. On
looking closer, I was seized with terror, for I
fancied they were all Frenchmen. ... It was
Paris, France ; a France gi'own foul, brutish,
savage. I experienced at this moment ho^y cre-
dulous terror is ; for I started no objection. I
said to myself. Here is another 1815, but it must
have lasted long, long years ; ages of misery must
have weighed heavily on my poor, irrevocably con-
demned country ; and I have returned hither to
bear my share of this boundless woe. And these ages
lay upon me with leaden weight ; ages upon ages
crowded into the space of two minutes ! I remained
immoveable, nailed to the spot. My fellow-traveller
shook me, and I came a little to myself. But I
could not banish the terrible dream wholly from
my mind, or be comforted ; and during my stay in
Ireland, I was oppressed by a profound melan-
choly, which is even now taking possession of me
whilst I write.
an
THE PEOPLE.
CHAPTER V.
Some years ago, the head of one of our socialist
schools, asked, " What is the meaning of one's
Native Land ?" Such cosmopolitan Utopias of ma-
terial enjoyments, strike me, I confess, as being
a prosaic commentary on Horace's ode, " Rome is
crumbling to her fall, let us fly to the fortunate
isles," that sad wail of abandonment and discou-
ragement. The Christians who succeed, with their
heavenly country and universal fraternity here
below, do not the less inflict the death-blow on the
empire by this beautiful and touching doctrine.
Their brothers of the North soon come and lead them
away captives, the rope round their necks. We
are not a slave's sons, without country, and with-
out gods, as was the great poet just quoted. We
are not Romans of Tarsus, like the Apostle of the
Gentiles. We are Romans of Rome, and French-
men of France. We are the sons of those who,
by the effort of an hei'oic nationality, have done the
world's work, and established for every nation, the
gospel of equality. Our fathers did not under-
stand fraternity to be that vague sympathy which
welcomes and loves everything, which mingles,
bastardizes, confounds. They believed fraternity
to be not the blind amalgamation of existences and
characters, but the imion of hearts. They kept for
themselves, for Franco, the originality of devoted-
ness and of sacrifice which none contested with her.
Alone, she watered with her blood the tree which
she planted. It was a glorious opening for the
other nations, not to allow her to stand alone.
They did not imitate France in her devotedness.
Would they now have France imitate them in their
selfishness, their moral indifference, and descend
to their level, since she could nut raise them to
hers ? Who but would marvel to see the people
who but lately reared that beacon-light of the
future to which the eyes of the world are turned,
walking submissively in the road of imitation! . . .
And what road is that ? We know it only too well,
many nations have followed it. It leads to suicide
and death.
Poor imitators ? You fancy this imitation ! , . .
You take from some neighbouring people what in
them is a living thing ; and you appropriate it, ill
or well, despite the repugnance of a nature with
which it does not assimilate— why, you are engraft-
ing a foreign body on your own flesh, an inert and
lifeless body ; you have adopted death. And what
if it be not only foreign and alien, but inimical ?
What if you take it from those whom nature has
made your adversaries, and has, in her symmetrical
arrangement, opposed to you ? What if you are
seeking resuscitation from what is the negation of
your own life ? If France, for instance, in contra-
diction to her whole history and nature, should
persist in copying her whom we may call Anti-
France, England ? National hate and blind ill-
will are out of the question liere. We esteem, as
we ought, the great British nation ; and we have
proved this by studying her as devotedly as any
man of the day. And the result of this very study
and esteem is, the conviction that the progress of
the world depends on the two countries preserving
their pecuHar qualities free from hctex'ogcneous
admixture, on the two opposed loadstones acting
inversely, on these two electrical currents, the posi-
tive and the negative, being never confounded.
That element which is the most foreign from our
nature, the English, is precisely that which we have
preferred. We have adopted it politically, into our
constitution, on the faith of the doctrinaires, who
copied without comprehending it; we have adopted
it into our literature, without perceiving that the
greatest genius England has produced in our time,
is he who has most violently belied it. And to sum
up, incredible and ridiculous as it seems, we have
adopted this same English element in art and
fashion ; and have actually set about copying that
stiffness and awkwardness which is neither extei*-
nal nor accidental, but is connected with a profound
physiological mystery. I have before me two
novels, each displaying great talent; and the cha-
racter held up to ridicule in both, is, what think
ye ? Why, the Frenchman, ever the Frenchman.
The Englishman is the hero, the invisible, but
ever present providence, who is the preserver in
each crisis, and comes ever opportunely to i-epair
the follies of the other. And how ? By being
rich. The Frenchman is the poor man, and the
poor in mind, too. Rich ! And is this the cause of
this singular infatuation ? The rich man (most
frequently the Englishman) is the well-beloved of
God. The freest and firmest minds can hardly
keep themselves from being prejudiced in his fa-
vour. The women think him handsome, the men
are willing to believe him noble. Our artists take
his sorry nag as their model. Avow it frankly,
then; wealth is the idol of this universal admi-
ration. England is rich ; her millions of beggars
are little matter. To the observer who does not
inquire into man, she presents a spectacle unique
in the woi'ld, that of the most enormous mountain
of riches ever heaped together. Triumphant in
agriculture, in machinery, with her countless ships,
warehouses choke full, and her exchange, the mis-
tress of the world — gold runs there like water.
Ah ! France has nothing similar to this. She is
the country of poverty. The mere enumeration of
v.hat the one has and the other has not, would lead
us too far. England may well ask of France with
a smile, what, after all, are the material results
of her activity ? what is to show for all her labour,
commotions, efforts ? Behold our poor France,
seated on the ground like Job, with her friends, the
nations, coming to comfort, question, improve her
if they can, and labour at her salvation. " Where
are your ships, your machines ? " asks England.
" Where are your systems?" asks Germany; " have
you not, at least, like Italy, works of art to show ?"
Kind sisters, who thus come to comfort France,
permit me to answer you. She is ill you see ; and
there she sits with drooping head, unwilling to
speak. Did you pile up the blood, the gold, the
efforts of every kind disinterestedly expended by
each nation for the advancement of the whole
world, the pyramid reared out of France would touch
the skies . . . whilst all of sacrifice that could be
piled up out of you, ye nations, would reach no
higher than a child's knee. Say not, then, to me,
" How pale France is ! " She has poured out lier
blood for you. " How poor she is ! " For you has
she given without counting. And, having no more
to give, she has said," Gold and silver have I none,
but what I have, that I give unto yon." And she has
DEVOTEDNESS ; THE CHARACTERISTIC OF FRANCE.
S7
given her soul, and it is on that you live *. All
that is now left to her, is what she has given to
others.
Listen, then, ye nations ; learn what but for us
you would never have leanied : — " The more one
gives, the more one keeps." , Her mind may be
sunk in sleep, but it is there, unimpaired within
her, and ready to rouse up like a giant refreshed.
Long have I followed France, living day by day
with her, for two thousand yeai's. We have seen
the woi'st days together, and I have learnt to be-
lieve that this country is the land of invincible
hope. It is clear that God enlightens her more
than any other nation, since in murkiest night she
sees when none other can see; and in those fright-
ful eclipses, which in the middle age and at other
times have hid the face of the sky fi'om all else,
France has discerned it. Such is France. With
her nothing dies; but all starts into fresh life.
When our Gallic peasants drove out the Romans
for an instant, and erected the Gauls into an em-
pire, they stamped upon their coin this country's
first motto (and its last) — Hope.
CHAPTER VI.
SUPERIORITY OF FRANCE, BOTH AS DOGMA AND LEGEND.
— FRANCE IS A RELIGION.
The foreigner fancies he has said all, when he
has exclaimed with a smile, " France is the infant
of Europe." Now, if you give it this title, which is
not the least in the sight of God, you must own
her to be the infant Solomon, sitting on the juilg-
ment-seat. What country, save France, has pre-
served the tradition of the law ? of ecclesiastical,
political, and civil law; the chair of Papinian, and
stool of Gregory VII. Rome is no whei'e but
hei'e. From the days of St. Louis, to whom has
all Europe — pope, emperor, and kings come for
justice?. . .Who could disown the theological
popedom in Gerson and Bossuet, the philosophical
popedom in Descartes and Voltaire, the political
and civil in Cujas and Dumoulin, in Rousseau and
Montesquieu ? Her laws, which are no other than
those of reason, are submitted to by her enemies
even. England has just given our civil code to
the island of Ceylon.
Rome held the pontificate of the dark ages, the
royalty of the doubtful. France has been the pon-
tiff of the ages of light.
This is not a mere accident of latter times, a
chance result of the Revolution. It is the legitimate
sequence of a tradition, connected with all tradition,
for two thousand years. No other nation possesses
any thing similar. With us has been continued the
gi'and movement of the human race (so clearly de-
fined by languages) from India to Greece, to Rome,
and thence to us. The history of all other counti'ies
is truncated, ours complete. Take the history of
Italy ; its latter ages are a blank. Take those of
Germany and England ; their earliest ages are a
blank. Take that of France, and you read the his-
tory of the world. And this great tradition is not
only strictly continuous, but progressive. France
has contiimed the work of Rome and of Christianity.
The promise Christianity gave, she has kept ; and
she has taught the world to consider fraternal
* That which gives life to the world is neither the com-
mercial mechanism of England, nor the scholastic of Ger-
many, but the latent heat of our Revolution.
equality, previously defen'ed to another life, as the
law of the present life. Two powerful elements
exist in us, which are found in no other people.
We possess at once the principle and the legend ;
the idea more comprehensive and humane, and,
at the same time, the most connected tradition.
This principle and this idea, buried in the middle
age under the dogma of grace, are called by men,
brotherhood. This tradition is that which, from
Ctesar's days to those of Charlemagne and St.
Louis, fi'om Louis XIV. to Napoleon, makes the
history of France the history of humanity ; and in
it, under diverse form, is perpetuated the moral
beau-ideal of the woi'ld, from St. Louis to the Pu-
celle, from Joan of Arc to our boy-generals of the
Revolution. The saint of France, however pre-
sented, is the saint of all nations, — adopted, blessed,
and deplored by all mankind.
" For every man," was the impartial observation
of an American philosopher, " the first country is his
own, and Fi-ance the second." And how many
prefer living hero to their own country ! Hither
do they flock, poor birds of passage, as soon as they
can break the thread that holds them, to alight,
seek shelter, and gain, at the least, a moment's
vital heat. They tacitly confess ours to be the
universal home. Now, this nation, thus regarded as
the asylum of the world, is much more than a
nation — it is a living brotherhood. And, however
she may at times faint, in the depth of her nature
she contains that principle of life which secures
her, whatever may happen, peculiar chances of
recovery. That day on which, i-emembering that
she was and must again be the salvation of man-
kind, France shall summon her children around
her, and teach them France as faith and as religion,
she will start into living energy, and be solid as the
globe.
The position I have just laid down, and on
which 1 have long meditated, is a momentous
one ; containing, perchance, the germ of our coun-
try's renovation. She is the only country which
is privileged to teach herself thus ; for she is the
one whicii has most identified her own interests
and destiny with those of humanity. And she is
the only one who can do so, because her grand
national, and, nevertheless, comprehensively hu-
man, legend is the only complete one, is the most
thoroughly followed out, of all, and is that which,
by its historical concatenation, best answers the
requisitions of reason. There is no fanaticism in
saying this. It is the too concise statement of
a serious opinion, based on long study. I could
easily prove that other nations have only special
legends, not adopted by the rest of the world ; and
these legends ai'e frequently isolated, individual,
unconnected with one another even in the same
country, standing out distinct, like separate points
of light. The national legend of France is one
trail of immense, uninterrupted light, — a true milky
way on which the world has ever its eyes fixed.
Germany and England, in race, language, and
instinct, are alien from the grand Romano-Christian
and democx-atic tradition of the world ; from which
they borrow without amalgamating what they
borrow with their own base, which is exceptional.
They borrow indirectly, awkwardly, take, and
don't take. Observe them well ; you will find in
their people, both jdiysically and morally, a dis-
cordance of life and principle not presented by
58
THE PEOPLE.
France, and which (even without taking into the
account intrinsic value, by stopping at the form
and consulting only art) must ever hinder the
world from seeking its models and instruction
there.
France, on the contrary, is not a compound of
two principles. The Celtic element in her is inter-
fused with the Roman, so that the two are one.
The Germanic element, of which some make so
much, is imperceptible. France proceeds direct
from Rome, and should teach Rome — teach her
language, her history, her law. There is nothing
absurd in our education so far. The absurdity is,
that it does not imbue this Roman education with
the sentiment of France ; that she lays a heavy
scholastic stress on Rome, which is the way, and
keeps out of view France, which is the goal.
This goal should be shown to the child fi'om the
outset. His starting-point should be France,
which is himself, and, tlu-ough Rome, he should be
led back to France, which is still himself. Ou
this wise only can our education form an har-
monious whole.
The day on which this people, restored to itself,
shall open its eyes and consider itself, it will be-
come aware that the first institution which can give
it life and durability, is to give to all (at greater or
less extent, according to the time at their disposal)
that harmonious education which shall implant the
country in the very heart of the child. This is our
only means of salvation. We have grown old in
our vices, and will not be cui-ed. If God saves this
glorious yet unfortunate country, he will save it
through the medium of infancy.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FAITH OP THE aEVOLUTION. — IT DID NOT PRESERVE
THIS FAITH TO THE END, AND HAS NOT TRANSMITTED
ITS SPIRIT BY EDUCATION.
The only government which devoted itself heart
and soul to the education of tli^ people was that of
the Revolution. The constituent and the legis-
lative assembly laid down the principles to be
followed, with admirable sagacity and with truly
human feeling. The Convention, even in the thick
of its fearful struggle with the world, with France
as well, whom it saved in spite of herself, and
amidst the personal dangers it ran, assassinated
and decimated in detail, never relaxed, but per-
tinaciously followed up the holy and sacred subject
of the education of the people ; and, amidst its
stormy nights, when sitting armed, and prolonging
each sitting, which might be the last, nevertheless
made time to summon all systems and examine
them. " If we decree education," exclaimed one of
its members, " we shall have lived long enough."
The three projects adopted are distinguished by
good sense and grandeur. They organize, from
the first, the high and the low, the normal schools
and the primary schools. They kindle a bright
flame, and bear it at once among the lowest depths
of the people. Then, more at leisure, they fill up
the intermediate space by central schools or col-
leges for the education of the wealthier classes.
Nevertheless, they raise the whole fabric at one
and the same time. The men of that day knew
that a living work was not to be created bit by bit.
Never to be forgotten day ! It was two months
after the 9th Thermidor. Men wei-e beginning
once more to believe in life. France, raised from
the tomb, suddenly come to maturity with the ex-
perience of twenty centuries; France, enlightened
yet bloody, summoned all her children to receive
the sovereign instruction of her vast experience.
"Come," she said to them, "and see." When
the rapporteur of the Convention pronounced this
simple but grave apophthegm, " Time alone could
be the professor of the republic," what eye could
have remained unmoistened ? All had paid dearly
for the lesson of the time, all had passed through
death, and had not escaped entire.
After these great trials, it seemed as if there
was a momentary lull for all human passions ; you
would have thought that pride, interest, and envy
were no more. The foremost men of the state, and
of the scientific world, accepted the humblest offices
as teachers. Lagrange and Laplace taught arith-
metic. Fifteen hundred pupils, grown up men,
many of whom were already celebrated, took their
places, as a thing of course, on the forms of the
normal school, to be taught how to teach. They
came, in the depth of winter, and at a time of
poverty and famine, as they best might. Over the
ruins of all material things, hovered alone, and
without a shadow, the majesty of mind. Men of
creative genius took in turn the chair at this great
school. Some, as Berthollet and Morvan, came to
found chemistry, to open and penetrate the inner
woi'ld of bodies; others, like Laplace and Lagrange,
had, by their calculations, given certitude to the
system of the world, and settled the earth on her
basis. Never did the power of mind appear more
irresistible. Reason, by obedience, yielded to
reason. And how did the heart mingle with the
scene when, among these chosen men, each of
whom appears but once in eternity, there was seen
a most precious head, which had narrowly escaped
the scaffold, — that of the good Haliy, saved by
St. Geoff'roy Hilaire.
A great citizen, Carnot, — he who" prepared the
plans that secured victory, who divined Hoche and
Bonaparte, who saved France in spite of the Reign
of Terror, — was the ti'ue founder of the Polytechnic
school. They learned, as men fought in those days,
and went through a three-years' course of study in
as many months. At the end of six, Monge
declared that they had not only received science,
but improved it. Spectators of the constant inven-
tions of their masters, they proceeded to invent
also. Imagine the spectacle of a Lagrange, who,
in the midst of his lecture, stopped short, lost in
profound abstraction. . . . The pupils waited in
silence. At last, he awaked from his trance, and
revealed to them, all glowing, the young invention,
hardly born of the brain. Every thing was want-
ing here, save genius. The pupils woiUd have
been unable to attend, had they not received a
stipend of four sous a day. Along with the bread
of the mind, they received their daily bi'ead. One
of the masters (Clouet) would accept as his only
payment a small plot of ground in the plain of
Sablons, and lived on the vegetables that he raised
there. What a falling off since those days ! a
moral, and no less greater intellectual fall. After
the reports laid before the Convention, read those
of Fourcroy and of Fontanes, and you find yourself
sink within a few brief years from virility to old
age, and that a decrepit old age. Is it not dis-
tressing to see this heroic, disinterested flight on
EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS OF THE REVOLUTION.
59
upward wing, flagging and falling earthward so
soon I This glorious normal school bears no fruit.
And our sui'prise at this ceases wlien we see the
meagreness of the insti-uction given to man, and
the sciences of man forsaking their ground, and
denying themselves as if in shame. The professor
of history, Volney, taught that history is the science
of dead facts; that history is not a living thing.
The professor of philosophy, Garat, asserted philo-
sophy to be only the study of signs, — in other words,
that philosophy is only an empty abstraction.
Signs for signs, mathematics had the advantage,
and their cognate sciences, as astronomy. And so,
revolutionary France, in that grand school which
was to spread its spirit every where, taught the
fixed stars and forgot herself.
And here, most of all, in this last effort of the
Revolution to found, was it discernible that she
could only be a prophet ; that she would die in the
wilderness, without seeing the promised land.
How coidd she have reached it ? She would have
requii'ed to do every thing; for she had no help
from previous preparations, or from the system
which had preceded her. She had entered upon
possession of an empty world, and by right of dis-
inheritance. I will one day show, beyond all pos-
sibility of disproof, that she found nothing to destroy.
The clergy was effete, the nobility effete, and the
monarchy effete ; and she had nothing to put in
their places. She revolved in a vicious circle. To
make the Revolution required men ; and to create
men, she should have been already made. No
help to enable her to effect the passage fi-om one
world to another ! An abyss to traverse, and no
wings to bear her across ! ... It is painful to
observe how little had been done in the four last
centuries by the guardians of the people, the crown
and clergy, to enlighten them. The Church spoke
to them in a learned language, which they no longer
comprehended. She made them learn by heart
that prodigious metaphysical doctrine, the subtlety
of which astonishes the most cultivated minds.
The state had dune but one thing, and that very in-
direct,— it had drawn the people together in camps
and large armies, where they began to appreciate
themselves. The legions of Francis I., and the
regiments of Louis XIV., were schools in which,
without any formal instruction, they formed them-
selves, acquired ideas in common, and gradually
rose to the sentiment of their native land.
The sole direct instruction was that which the
bourgeois received in colleges, and which they
prosecuted as lawyers and men of letters ; consist-
ing in the verbal study of languages, rhetoric, litera-
ture, the study of the laws, not leai-ned and precise
like that of our ancient jurisconsults, but self-
dubbed philosophical, and full of shallow abstrac-
tions. Logicians without metaphysics, legists with-
out law and history, their belief was bounded by
signs, forms, figures, plu-ases. They were barren
in each and all things of substance, life, and the
sentiment of life. And how a bad nature might be
rendei'ed worse by scholastic subtlety, was plainly
seen when they came upon the grand theatre where
vanities are embittered into deadly hate. These
formidable abstractors of quintessence armed them-
selves with five or six formulas, which they used,
like so many guillotines, to abstract men. It was
a fearful thing when the gi-eat assembly, which,
under Robespierre, had made the Reign of Terror
by terror itself, raised her head, and saw all the
blood she had shed. She had never lost faith
when the whole world was in league against her ;
not even when, with but thirty departments on her
side, she contended with France, and kept together
and saved all. She never lost faith, even in her
personal danger, when, Paris being no longer hers,
she was compelled to arm her own members, and
saw herself on the point of being left without any
other defender. But, face to face with the blood
she had shed, and in presence of all those dead
men rising from their tombs, in presence of
this whole people of prisoners set at liberty, who
came to judge their judges, she lost heart, and
began to desert herself.
She did not take the step which would have made
the future hers. She lacked courage to lay her
hand on the young world that was rising up. To
have made it hers, the Revolution ought to have
taught but one thing, one lesson — the Revolution.
For this she would have required, not to deny the
past, but rather to claim it, to enter into possession,
to make it her own, as she did with the present; to
show that she had, along with the authority of
reason, that of history, of all our historical nation-
ality, that the Revolution was the tardy, but just
and necessary manifestation of the genius of this
people; that she was no other than France arrived
at the knowledge of her right. All this she neg-
lected to do ; and the absti-act reason to which
alone she appealed, could not support her in pre-
sence of the fearful realities which rose up against
her. She doubted herself, abdicated, and passed
away. It was needful that she should die and de-
scend into the toml), for her living spirit to be dif-
fused over the world. Ruined by her defender, he
rendei's her his homage in the hundred days.
Ruined by the Holy Alliance, kings base their
treaty against her on the social dogma which
she enunciated in '89. That faith which she had
not in herself, enters those who have combated
her. The sword which they have plunged into her
heart, works miracles and heals. She converts
her persecutors, teaches her enemies. Why did
she not teach her children ?
CHAPTER VIII.
NO EDUCATION WITHOUT FAITH.
The first question of education is this : — " Have you
faith? Do you repose faith f The child must believe.
The child should be taught belief in those things,
which, when a man, he can prove by his own reason.
To make a child a reasoner, a wrangler, a critic, is
folly. What should we think of the husbandman, who
should be incessantly turning over the seeds he had
sown ! To make a child erudite is folly. Loading
his memory with a chaos of knowledge, useful or
unuseful, heaping up in him an indigested store of
innumerable things all ready-made, things not
living but dead, and in dead fragments without the
slightest assimilation ... is to murder his mind.
. . . Before adding and amassing, it requires to
exist. You must create and strengthen the living
germ of the young existence. The infant exists at
first by faith. Faith is the common basis of inspi-
ration and action. No great thing without it.
The Athenian had the faith that all human cul-
tivation descended from the Acropolis of Athens ;
60
THE PEOPLE,
that from his Pallas, herself sprung from Jupiter's
brain, had emanated the light of art and science.
His faith has been realized. Tliat city of twenty
thousand citizens has flooded the world with lier
light, and, though dead, still enlightens it. — The
Roman had the faith that the living and bleeding
head found under his Capitol, prognosticated that
he should be the head, the judge, the prcetor of
the world. His faith has been realized. If his
empire has passed away, his law remains and con-
tinues to rule the nations. — The Christian had the
faith that a God, made man, would raise up a peo-
ple of brothers, and, sooner or later, would unite
the world as one heart. His faith has not been
realized; but it will through us.
It was not enough to say that God was made
man. This truth, thus generally stated, remained
unproductive. It should be shown how God has
manifested himself in the man of each nation, and
how, amidst the variety of national genius, the
Father has accommodated himself to the wants
of his children. The unity with which he seeks
to endow us is not a monotonous unity, but an
harmonious unity, where all diversities meet in
love. Let them love, but let them subsist ; let
them go on increasing in splendour, the better
to enlighten the world, and let man from his
birth be accustomed to recognize a living God
in his native land. And here, I meet a grave ob-
jection : — " How give faith when I have so little
myself ? Faith in my native land, as a religious
faith, has grown weak within me !" Were faith
and reason opposites, there being no rational
means of arriving at faith, we should be forced,
like the mystics, to stop short, sigh, and wait.
But the faith worthy of man is a belief of love
in what reason proves. The object is not an
accidental marvel, but the permanent miracle
of nature and history. To recover faith in
France, and hope in its future, you must review
its past history, investigate its natural genius ; and
if you apply to this study seriously and heartily,
the consequence will inlallibly follow from the
premises laid down. From the past you will de-
duce the future, the mission of France, which will
dawn forth upon you in fulness of light. You will
believe, and you will love to believe. Faith is
nothing more.
How can you contentedly remain ignorant of
France ? Your origin is in her. If you know her
not, you will know nothing of yourself. You are
enshrined in her, live in her, on her ; with her
must die. But may she and you both live by faith!
And if you consider your children, this young world
which wishes to live, which is still good and docile,
which asks for the life of belief, your heart will
warm to her. You have grown old in hidiffer-
ence ; but which of you can desire his son to be
dead at heart, without country, without God ?
These children, in wh(mi ai'c the souls of your ances-
tors, are your country, old and new. Let us help
it to know itself ; and it will give us back the gift
of living. Just as the poor are necessary to the
rich, so is the child necessary to the man. We
give him still less than we receive from him.
Young world, soon to take our place, receive my
thanks. Who, more than I, has studied the past
history of France ? Who should know her bet-
ter, by so many personal trials which have revealed
to me her trials ? Still, I must own that my miud,
in the inactivity of solitude, was either idly specu-
lating on points rather nice than impoi'tant, or else,
losing sight of earth, was wandering in the clouds,
that the reality was escaping me, and our native
land, which I ever sought, ever loved, was ever left
behind, though my object, my aim, my object of
science and study. She has appeared to me
living. " In whom 1" In you, my reader. In
you, young man, I see my country and her eternal
youth. How can I fail to believe in her ?
CHAPTER IX.
GOD IN OUR COUNTRY. — THE YOUNfi COUNTRY OF THE
FUTURE. — SACRIFICE.
Education, like every work of art, requires, first of
all, a strong, simple sketch ; no subtlety, no mi-
nute detail, nothing to create difficulty or provoke
objection. By a grand, salutary, durable impres-
sion, we must found man in the child, create the
life of the heart. God, first revealed by the mo-
ther, in love and in nature. Next, God revealed
by the father, in our liviug country, in its heroic
history, in the sentiment of France. God, and the
love of God. Let the mother, on St. John's day,
when the earth renews its annual miracle, when
every herb is in flower, and you can fancy you see
the plants growing, take him into a garden, em-
brace him, and say tenderly to him, " You love
me, my dear child, you know only me . . . but listen
— I am not all. You have another mother. We
have all one common mother, — men, women, chil-
dren, animals, plants, all that has life, — a tender
mother, who always feeds us, and is invisible yet
present. . . Let us love her, dear child, let us em-
brace her with all our heart." Nothing more for
a long time. No metaphysics to stifle the impres-
sion. Leave him to brood over the sublime and
tender mystery which his whole life will not suffice
to explain. That is a day which he will never
forget. Amidst all the trials of life, the obscuri-
ties of science, amidst the passions and the night
of storms, the sweet sun of St. John's day will
ever shine in the depths of his heart, with the im-
mortal flower of the purest, the best love.
Another day, when somewhat older, when the
man is alive within him, he accompanies his father.
It is a great public festival, and the streets of
Paris are thronged. He takes his child from
Notre-Dame to the Louvre, to the Tuileries, to the
Ai'C de Triomphe. From a roof, or terrace, he
shows him the array defiling, the bayonets glanc-
ing, the tricolor flag. . . . And, during some inter-
val of expectation, before the /ete begins, by the
fantastic reflections of the illumination, during one
of those awe-inspiring hills which suddenly still the
sombre ocean of the people, he stoops down to him
and says, " Here, my dear boy, look here. There
is France, there your country ! All that you see
is as if one man; they have the same soul, the same
heart. All the men you see there ought to lay
down their lives to save any one man amongst
them; and so each man ought to be ready to lay
down his life for all the rest. . . . Those who are
marching yonder, and who have arms in their
hands, who are leaving, are going to fight for
us. They are leaving their fathei", their aged
mother, who need their help. ... Do you do the
same when called upon ; never forget that your
mother is France."
EDUCATION.
61
I know human nature very little, if this impres-
sion will not last. He has seen his counfi'y. . . .
The God, invisible in his exalted unity, is visible
in his members, anil in the great works in which
the national life is deposited. It is a living person
wliieh the child touches and feels on every side.
He cannot embrace her, but she embraces him,
warms him with her great soul diffused throughout
that multitude, and speaks to him by her monu-
ments. ... It is a fine privilege for the Swiss to
be able, with one look, to contemplate his canton,
to embrace from his Alpine summit his beloved
district, and stamp her image on his heart. But,
of a truth, it is a grand one for the Frenchman to
have this glorious and immortal country of his con-
centrated in one point, to have all times, all places
in juxta-position, to trace from the ± hennes de Cesar
to the Colonne, to the Louvre, to the Champ de
Mars ; from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de
la Concorde, the history of France and the world.
Still, it is at school, at the great national school
which one day or other will be established, that
the child will acquire the strong, and never to be
effaced, perception of his country. I allude to a
school wliich shall really be a common school,
where children of every class and condition shall
meet for one or two years and sit together on the
same forms before they receive their special educa-
tion, and where their only lesson shall be France.
We park off our children amongst children of their
own condition of life at school and college ; shun
all chance of mixture, and hasten to separate the
poor and the rich, at that happy age when the
child of himself would have known none of those
empty distinctions. We seem alarmed lest they
should learn the real world in which they have
to live, and by this pi'ecocious isolation we lay
the seeds of those hatreds arising out of igno-
rance and envy, of that internal war from which
we afterwards suffer.
If inequality must subsist between men, fain
would I have childhood allowed to follow its instinct
for a moment, and live in equality ; fain have
these innocent uneuvious little men of God ex-
hibit to our profit, in the school, the touching
ideal of society. For that would be our school as
well ; whither we should go to learn of them the
vanity of ranks, the folly of rival pretensions, and
the seci'et of true life and happiness — that there
be no first or last. There would our country
show herself to us young and cheering at once
in her variety and in her uniformity, instructive
variety of characters, countenances, races — an iris
of a hundred hues, every rank, fortune, dress on
the same forms, the velvet and the blouse, the
black bread and the dainty cake. There might the
rich learn, in their youth, what it is to be poor,
suffer from witnessing inequality, be allowed to
participate in it, endeavour to the best of their
strength to restore equality, and finding seated on
these wooden benches the city of the world, begin
to conceive there the city of God ! .... On the
other liand, the poor will learn and recollect,
perhaps, that if his rich schoolfellow be rich, it is
not his fault, for, after all, he is born so ; and that
his very riches often make him poor as regards
the first of blessings, poor in will and in moral
strength. Inestimable would be the benefit if all
the sons of the same people, brought together
by this means, at least for a time, were to see and
know one another before contracting the vices of
poverty and of wealth — selfishness and envy. The
feeling of comitry would be ineffaceably stamped
on the child's mind; for he would be brought into
contact with her not only as a subject of study and
instruction in the school, but as a living country,
an infant country, like to himself, a better city
before the City, a city of equality, where all would
sit down to the same spiritual banquet. And I
would have him noi only see and learn his counti-y,
but feel her as Providence, recognize her as
mother and as nurse, by her strengthening milk
and vivifying warmth. God defend our ever keep-
ing a child from school, and denying him the food
of the mind, because he is without that of the
body ! Oh ! impious avarice, which would give
thousands to masons and priests, which would
acquire wealth only to endow death, and which
would haggle with these little children, who ax'e
the hope, the life-blood, the heart of hearts of
France.
Elsewhere I have said that I am not one of those
who are ever wailing, — now over the stout work-
man, who earns his five francs a day, — now over
the poor woman, who earns but her half- franc.
So impartial a pity is no pity. We must give
women free convents, asylums, temporary work-
rooms ; not starve them any longer in convents.
And we must all be fathers to the children ; must
open our arms to them, and make the school their
asylum ; a kind and liberal one, where they shall
be happy, to which they shall go cheerfully ; and
so love this home of France as much, and more,
than their own homes. ... If your mother can-
not feed thee, if thy father is tyrannical, if thou art
naked and hungry, hither, my son ; the gates are
wide open, and France on the thi'eshold with open
arms to receive thee. Never will this great mother
be ashamed to attend thee as nurse ; with her own
heroic hand will she make thee the soldier's soup ;
and, for lack of raiment to shield and I'evive thy
little frozen limbs, she would even tear off a strip
of her own immortal flag. Comforted, caressed,
happy, free in mind, let tlie child receive on these
foi-nis the food of truth. Let him learn, first of
all, how God has blessed him by giving him this
country, which proclaimed and inscribed, with her
own blood, the law of divine equity, of brotherhood;
let him learn that the God of nations has spoken by
France. Teach him, first of all, the country as
dogma and principle ; and then the country as
legend ; our two redemptions — by the holy maid of
Orleans, by the Revolution; the soaring outbreak
of '92 ; the miracle of the young flag ; our generals
admired and wept by the enemy ; the purity, of
Marceau ; the magnanimity of Hoche ; the glory
of Areola and of Austerlitz ; Csosar and our second
Caesar, in whom our greatest kings were renewed
with added greatness ; and, loftier still, the glory
of our sovereign assemblies, the pacific and ti'uly
human genius of '89, when France so sincerely
offered all liberty and peace ; and finally, crowning
the whole, as his last lesson, the immense power of
devotedness and of sacrifice which our fathers have
displayed, and the countless times France has
offered up her life for the world.
Child, be this thy first Gospel, the stay of thy
life, the food of thy heart. Thou wilt dwell upon
it when toiling at the painful, ungi-ateful tasks
to which the world will summon thee. It will be a
02
THE PEOPLE.
powerful Cdi'dial to revive thee when thy spirit
faints within thee. It will beguile thy thouglits
during the long days of labour, and deadly weari-
someness of manufacturing life. In the desert of
Africa, thou wilt meet with it to cheer thy home-
sick heart ; to sustain thee when worn out by
marches and watchinga, standing sentinel at the
advanced post, two steps from the barbarians.
The child must know the world, but must first
know himself, in his best self; I mean France. He
must learn the rest through her. She must ini-
tiate him, by narrating to him her tradition. And
she will tell him of the three revelations vouchsafed
her : how Rome taught her the just, Greece the
beautiful, and Judea the holy. So the last lesson
she gives him, will be a corollary of the first he
received from his mother. His mother taught him
God, and his great mother will teach him tlie
dogma of love, God made man, Cliristianity ; and
how love, impossible in the barbarous and malevo-
lent times of the middle age, icas inscribed in the laws
by the Revolution, so that the God tcithin man might
be made manifest.
Were I to write a treatise on education, I would
show how the general education, inten-upted by the
special education, (that of the college or of the
workshops,) ought to be resumed under his flag by
the young soldier. The country ought so to repay
him for the time he gives her. When she releases
liim to his liome, she ought to watch him not as
law only, but as civil providence, as religious moral
culture, through assemblies, popular libraries, the-
atres, fetes of all kinds, especially musical ones.
How long should education last ? For life. What
is the first part of politics \ Education. The se-
cond ? Education. And the third ! Education.
I have studied history too long for faith in laws,
when men have not been prepared to receive them,
when they have not been diligently brought up to
love and desire law. Fewer laws, I pray you ;
but strengthen the principle of laws by education.
Render them applicable and possible. Make men,
and all will go well. Policy holds forth the pro-
mise of order, peace, public security ? But why
give us all these blessings ? Merely to put us to
sleep in a selfish sense of enjoyment, and dispense
with our loving or knowing one another ? May
it perish, if such be its aim! For me, I would
rather believe that if this order, this grand social
harmony has an aim, it is to aid free progress, to
favour the advancement of all by all. Society
should be but an initiation from birth to death, an
education embracing our whole life in this world,
and preparing life to come. Education (word little
understood) is not only the culture of the son by
the father, but even yet more, that of the father
by the son. If we can recover from our moral
decline, it will be by our children, and for them.
The most abandoned desires his son to be good ;
he who will make no sacrifices for humanity or his
country, will for his family; and, if not dead to the
moral sense, and out of his owu senses, pities his
child who runs the risk of being like himself. . . .
Well, in the name of our children, let us not suffer
this country of ours to perish. Would you be-
queath them shipwreck, deserve their malediction,
and the malediction of posterity, and of the whole
woi-ld, lost, perhaps, for a thousand years, if France
succumb \ You can only save your children, and
France with them, by one thing ; found their
faith; faith unto devotedness, unto sacrifice, — faith
in the great association in which all sacrifice
themselves for all — in their native land.
This I know is the most difficult of all educa-
tions ; for it requires example, not words. And
we seem to have lost the power of magnanimous
sacrifice so common among our fathers ; lience our
evils, our hates, the internal discord which renders
France sick unto death and the laughing-stock of
the world. If I take aside the best and most
honourable, and urge them ever so little, I find
that each, however apparently disinterested, has,
at bottom, some petty matter in reserve which
nothing would induce him to sacrifice. A man
who would give his life for France, will not re-
uounce this or that pleasure, habit, or vice. We
have still men superior to all sordid love of money;
but are they free from pride ? Will they take off
their gloves to tender their hand to the pour man
toiling along the rough path of fate ! And,
yet, I tell them that their white, cold hands will
never make works of life except they meet the
strong, warm, living grasp of the poor. We must,
some time or other, sacrifice our habits, still dearer
to us than our enjoyments. And the hour of battle
is nigh The heart, too, has its habits, so
strongly interwoven with its living fibres as to be
living fibres themselves ; and how hard to pluck
out ! I have felt it whilst writing this book; in
which I have wounded more than one that was
dear to me.
First, I have been obliged to say to the middle
age, in which I have passed my life, and whose
touching yet powerless aspiration I have sum-
moned up in my historical works — Araunt ! even
now that impure hands are tearing her from the
tomb, and placing that stumbling-block before us
on the path of the future. In like manner have I
immolated another religion, — the humanitary dream
of philosophy, wliich tliinks to save the individual
by destroying the citizen, by denying nations,
abjuring the native land. The native land, my
native land, alone can save the world.
I have proceeded from the poetic legend to logic,
and from logic to faith, to the heart. And in this
heart, and in this faith, have I found old and
venerable feelings raise their protest. . . . Friend-
ships, the obstacles most hard to surmount, have
not stopped me when my native land, in peril, was
in view. May she accept the sacrifice ! I offer up
to her all I have in the world, my affections; and,
to give my native land the endearing name handed
down by antique France, I lay them on the altar
of the Grand Friendship !
THE END.
London: Gilbert and Rivington, Printers, St. Jolin's Square.
Date Due
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The life of Luther gathered from his own
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library
1 1012 00073 8007
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